Conceptualizing the Carceral Turn: Neoliberalism, Racism, and Violation

Abstract

This article considers the turn to punishment in neoliberalism, and the hardening it marks in the criminal justice system, education, and public life. Examining tensions between neoliberalism’s doctrine of equality before the market and its actual reproduction of racial disparities, I specify a concept of violation, as a principle of both material and symbolic domination, that can respond to these tensions. Considering influential analyses of the turn toward punishment, I argue that the historic legacy of racism is a crucial determinant of the excesses of current regimes of penality, and that racialized repression figures in a contemporary recomposition of political economy. Furthermore, in the neoliberal moment the disciplinary repertoire of racism is extrapolated to new populations and terrains. I recontextualize the current carceral turn within a broader logic of violation that links moments of social production and decomposition, and fuses processes of material exploitation with racialized injury and subjection.

The Strange Fruit of Racist Violence

“…This history of racism and the onslaught of neoliberalism has produced an increased use of prisons and a turn to harsher punishment, especially against non-white poor people (De Lissovoy, 2013), essentially turning the US into what may well be called a custodial state imprisoning its more vulnerable populations, both black and brown (Turner, 2015). Whether it is to absorb unemployed black labor, as Turner argues, or to rob the black community of leaders and voices to champion its causes (Marable et al, 2007), the increasing use of prisons represents another step escalating the system of racial oppression in the US (Kilgore, 2015).…”

Confined in Waiting: Young Asylum Seekers Narrating In and Out of Temporary Shelter

“…Their stories imply the ways in which restrictive immigration policies and institutionalized othering become normalised (for example, Kokab's encounter with the immigration official, which turned out to be a missed opportunity to encounter, see and listen Kokab as a human), while structural inequalities (based on class, race, ethnicity, gender, religion, etc.) are attributed to 'individual' failure rather than the material and relational work of preexisting and historicised power relations (De Lissovoy, 2012;Green, 2019). In other words, asylum processes seemingly evaluate the situations of the individual and their countries of origin, while in reality, these situations have little impact on the asylum outcome.…”

¿Inglés para la paz? Colonialidad, ideología neoliberal y expansión discursiva en Colombia Bilingüe

“…Del mismo modo, Guerrero y Quintero (2009) Los trabajos mencionados anteriormente sobre las ideologías de Colombia Bilingüe señalan su estrecho vínculo con el neoliberalismo. Reconociendo el amplio rango de usos de este término, en este artículo utilizo el neoliberalismo para señalar la ideología (y sus prácticas) dominante en la actualidad, la cual normaliza la racionalidad económica, el individualismo y la privatización de lo público a través de complejos sistemas económicos, políticos y militares (Apple, 2000;Davies y Bansel, 2007;De Lissovoy, 2012).…”