现代国家刑罚中的身体问题

The Problem of the Body in Modern State Punishment

身体惩罚的消失是现代国家刑罚合法性的来源之一。在过去的四十年中,美国建立了一个庞大且膨胀的监禁系统,而没有解决监狱过度拥挤、资源匮乏的环境给囚犯造成的身体与精神伤害。将监禁虚构为“剥夺自由”的做法掩盖了数百万囚犯遭受身体痛苦的事实,也无视造成身体受苦的规训权力和制度缺漏。同样,脱离身体的死刑和“不触及身体就结束生命”的处决,有助于确保死刑所谓的“尊严”与其社会可接受性。在西方其他国家废除死刑后,正是上述回避和规避做法导致死刑在美国继续存在。

The disappearing body is one of the conditions upon which the legitimacy of modern state punishment, both carceral and capital, largely depends. Over the last 40 years, the United States has been able to build a chronically overcrowded system of mass imprisonment without pausing to address the physical and mental injuries that crowded, poorly resourced conditions produce for prison inmates. The fiction of imprisonment as "deprivation of liberty" occludes millions of suffering bodies and the regimes of discipline and neglect that produce them. Similarly, the fiction of a disembodied death penalty and an execution that "ends life without touching the body" help ensure the "dignity" and acceptability of capital punishment. These evasions and avoidances have helped sustain the life of capital punishment in this country long after it has been abolished elsewhere in the West.