Philosophy Faculty Work

Title

How America Disguises Its Violence: Colonialism, Mass Incarceration, and the Need for Resistant Imagination

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2019

Publication Title

Critical Review of International Social & Political Philosophy

Volume Number

22

Issue Number

5

DOI

10.1080/13698230.2019.1565698

Abstract

This paper examines how a delusive social imaginary of criminal-justice has underpinned contemporary U.S. mass incarceration and encouraged widespread indifference to its violence. I trace the complicity of this criminal-justice imaginary with state-organized violence by comparing it to an imaginary that supported colonial violence. I conclude by discussing how those of us outside of prison can begin to resist the entrenched images and institutions of mass incarceration by engaging the work and imagining the perspective of incarcerated people.

ISSN

1369-8230

First Page

542

Last Page

561

Link Out URL

https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2019.1565698

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