Critical Criminology

, Volume 17, Issue 3, pp 145–158 | Cite as

To Discipline and Publish: Scottsboro and Narratives of Delinquency

Article
First Online:

Abstract

With the economics of racism of the 1930s and 1950s American South in mind, our essay explores the relationship between the act of writing and institutional penology. Taking an obscure, but visceral autobiographical account by Paterson and Conrad (Scottsboro Boy, Garden City Doubleday, 1950), we examine how discipline, punishment, and institutional identity emerge out of publishing, or, as Foucault put it, “the power of writing.” Narratives of delinquency born out of a racialized penal economy tend to resist attempts to tame the criminal, making institutional survival a productive discourse, and its articulation, a unique revolutionary act.

Keywords

Corporal Punishment Prison System State Prison Penal System Prose 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

References

  1. (1926). Alabama’s convict system under fire. The Literary Digest, 89(2), 10–11.Google Scholar
  2. (1950). Alabama. The Nation, 71(4), 71.Google Scholar
  3. (1950). Long journey, Time, 56(19), 19.Google Scholar
  4. Aptheker, H. (1945). Essays on the history of the American Negro. New York: International Publishers.Google Scholar
  5. Belsey, C. (1980). Critical practice. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
  6. Benton, R., & Ballou, R. O. (2008). Where do I go from here? The life story of a forger. [1936]. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger.Google Scholar
  7. Bernauer, J. W. (1990). Michel Foucault’s force of flight: Toward an ethics for thought. New York: Humanities.Google Scholar
  8. Burns, R. E. (1932). I am a fugitive from a Georgia chain gang!. New York: Vanguard.Google Scholar
  9. Carter, H. (1950). Cause celebre and cause CP. Saturday Review of Literature, 33, 11–12.Google Scholar
  10. Carter, D. T. (1979). Scottsboro: A tragedy of the American South. Baton Rouge: LSU Press.Google Scholar
  11. Collier, T. (1950). Review of Scottsboro Boy. New York Herald Tribune, 5.Google Scholar
  12. Egger, R., & Cooper, W. (1949). Research, education, and regionalism: The Bureau of Public Administration of the University of Alabama 1938–1948. Alabama: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
  13. Eribon, D. (1991). Michel Foucault (B. Wing, Trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
  14. Foucault, M. (1974). Michel Foucault on Attica: An interview. Telos, 19, 154–161.Google Scholar
  15. Foucault, M. (1977). Nietzsche, genealogy, history. In D. F. Bouchard (Ed.), Language, counter-memory practice: Selected essays and interviews (pp. 139–164). Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
  16. Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). New York: Vintage. (1977).Google Scholar
  17. Foucault, M. (1980). Truth and power. In C. Gordon (Ed.), Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writing 1972–1977 (pp. 109–133). Brighton: Harvester Press.Google Scholar
  18. Franklin, H. B. (1978). The victim as criminal and artist: Literature from the American prison. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  19. Gillan, J. L. (1931). Taming the criminal: Adventures in penology. New York: MacMillan.Google Scholar
  20. Goodman, J. E. (1995). Stories of Scottsboro. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
  21. Gouldner, A. (1971). The coming crisis in Western sociology. New York: Avon.Google Scholar
  22. Green, F. M. (1969). Some aspects of the convict lease system in the Southern States. Democracy in the old south and other essays. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.Google Scholar
  23. Herbst, J. (1931). Lynching in the quiet manner. New Masses, 7, 11.Google Scholar
  24. Lemay, J. A. L. (1985). The beginnings. In L. D. Rubin Jr., et al. (Eds.), The history of Southern literature. Baton Rouge: LSU Press.Google Scholar
  25. Macey, D. (1993). The lives of Michel Foucault. London: Hutchinson.Google Scholar
  26. MacLeod, N. (1931). Agitated Alabama. New Masses, 7, 18–19.Google Scholar
  27. March, R. A. (1978). Alabama bound: Forty-five years inside a prison. Alabama: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
  28. McKelvey, B. (1934–1935). A half century of Southern penal exploitation. Social Forces, 13(1), 112–123.Google Scholar
  29. McKelvey, B. (1936). American prisons: A study in American social history. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
  30. Miller, J. (1993). The passion of Michel Foucault. New York: Anchor.Google Scholar
  31. Moos, M. (1942). State penal administration in Alabama. Alabama: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
  32. Moos, M., & Rourke, F. E. (1959). The campus and the state. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
  33. Murray, H. T. (1969). The NAACP versus the communist party: The Scottsboro rape cases, 1931–1932. In B. Sternsher (Ed.), The Negro in depression and war: Prelude to revolution 1930–1945. Chicago: Quadrangle.Google Scholar
  34. Neustadter, R. (1989). The ‘deadly current’: The death penalty in the industrial age. Journal of American Culture, 12(3), 79–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  35. Norris, C., & Washington, S. D. (1979). The last of the Scottsboro Boys: An autobiography. NY: Putnam.Google Scholar
  36. Patterson, H., & Conrad, E. (1950). Scottsboro Boy. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday.Google Scholar
  37. Popham, J. N. (1950). Review of Scottsboro Boy. New York Times, 14.Google Scholar
  38. Powell, J. C. (1969). The American Siberia or fourteen years’ experience in a southern convict camp. (1891). New York: Arno.Google Scholar
  39. Ross, D. (1991). The origins of American social science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  40. Simmons, R. (1950). Review of Scottsboro Boy. Chicago Sunday Tribune, 7.Google Scholar
  41. Spingarn, A. (1951). Review of Scottsboro Boy. The Crisis, 58(2), 82.Google Scholar
  42. Van West, C. (1981). Perpetuating the myth of America: Scottsboro and its interpreters. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 80(1), 36–48.Google Scholar
  43. Wilson, W. (1933). Forced labor in the United States. New York: International Publishers.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Theater and CinemaVirginia TechBlacksburgUSA
  2. 2.Africana Studies/SociologyVirginia TechBlacksburgUSA

Personalised recommendations