Scott Smedley

Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Wallace, Miriam

Area of Concentration

Literature

Abstract

In an age of mass incarceration crisis when imprisonment rates have skyrocketed, especially along lines of race and class, those with low vulnerability for incarceration might not be inclined to think of themselves as having much connection to the crisis. However, considering ways that these populations reinforce and drive mass incarceration through their participation in a punitive culture opens new ground for reflexivity and action. In this project, I explore the role of reading and readers in the United States criminal punishment system. Drawing from thinkers like Michel Foucault and Michelle Brown, I argue that material realities of imprisonment shape people’s subjectivities, even when they are far outside of prison walls. The use of spectacle in representation and penal subjectivities in readers contribute to practices of reading that keep the carceral state stable. In opposition, I offer a model of reading called “rehabilitative readings” that centers material relief for the incarcerated as its goal. In this model, the individual body and the social body are inextricably linked and the rehabilitation of one cannot come without the healing of the other. Within this framework, I look at two popular narratives of imprisonment, the 1994 Frank Darabont film The Shawshank Redemption and the currently running Netflix series Orange Is the New Black. These popular visual representations are useful for thinking about the role that the prison has for those with limited familiarity with the institution. I look at these narratives with attentiveness to questions of how they are structured by ideologies and material conditions of punishment, and what possibilities they hold for enabling restructuring of these ideologies and material conditions.

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