
Contents
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6.1 Crimes of Justice: Penal Hell in ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ 6.1 Crimes of Justice: Penal Hell in ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’
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6.2 From the Crime of Imprisonment to the Crime of Punishment: Mead, Shaw, Menninger, and Wilson 6.2 From the Crime of Imprisonment to the Crime of Punishment: Mead, Shaw, Menninger, and Wilson
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6.3 Vindictive Justice: The Lure of Punitivity 6.3 Vindictive Justice: The Lure of Punitivity
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6.4 Colonialism as Carcerality 6.4 Colonialism as Carcerality
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6.4.1 The Colonial Roots of Punitivity 6.4.1 The Colonial Roots of Punitivity
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6.4.2 Colonial Surveillance; or, Strickland among the Natives 6.4.2 Colonial Surveillance; or, Strickland among the Natives
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6.4.3 Slavery and Carcerality 6.4.3 Slavery and Carcerality
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6.4.4 Colonial Imprisonment as Slavery on Robben Island 6.4.4 Colonial Imprisonment as Slavery on Robben Island
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6.5 Real-Life Abjection in the Neocolonial Prison Archipelago 6.5 Real-Life Abjection in the Neocolonial Prison Archipelago
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6.6 Summary 6.6 Summary
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6 The Cancer of Punitivity: Prisons of Slavery and Hell
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Published:August 2019
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Abstract
Chapter 6 raises crucial ethical and political questions about the practice of punishment by means of the prison. It discusses the central importance of power in the carceral environment and its potential for humanitarian abuse. After a reading of Oscar Wilde’s ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol’ the chapter outlines G. B. Shaw’s and Karl Menninger’s metaphoric thesis of imprisonment as crime and goes on to present an analysis of punitivity in current penal policy and public polemic. The second half of the chapter turns to a delineation of the close affinities between penal punitivity and colonial oppression, analysing memoirs by Robben Island inmates and the Malawian Sam Mpasu, as well as poetry by Dennis Brutus and Jack Mapanje.
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