The Prison Contract and Surplus Punishment

On Angela Y. Davis's Abolitionism

Eduardo Mendieta

pp. 291-309

in: Human Studies 30 (4), 2007.

Abstract

…racism is scattered, diffused throughout the entire United States; it is shifty, sullen, arrogant, and hypocritical. There is one place where we might hope that this racism would cease, but on the contrary, this is where it becomes more cruel than anywhere else, where it is aggravated at every moment, where it does its work directly on bodies and souls, where racism becomes a kind of concentrate of racism: American prisons, and, it seems, of all American prisons, Soledad Prison, and at its center, the cell of Soledad… we could say that racism is here in its pure state, tautly alert, radiant, and ready to spring. (Genet 2004, pp. 51–52)

Cited authors

Davis Angela Y