Politics In Captivity

From the 1811 German Coast Slave Rebellion to the 1971 Attica Prison Uprising, from the truancy of enslaved women to the extreme self-discipline exercised by prisoners in solitary confinement, Black Americans have, through time, resisted racial regimes in extraordinary and everyday ways. Though these acts of large and small-scale resistance to slavery and incarceration are radical and transformative, they have often gone unnoticed. This book is about Black rebellion in captivity and the ways that many of the conventional well-worn constructs of academic political theory render its political dimensions obscure and indiscernible. While Hannah Arendt is an unlikely theorist to figure prominently in any discussion of Black politics, her concepts of world and worldlessness offer an indispensable framework for articulating a theory of resistance to chattel and carceral captivity. Politics in Captivity begins by taking seriously the ways in which slavery and incarceration share important commonalities, including historical continuity. In Zuckerwise’s account of this commonality, the point of connection between enslaved and incarcerated people is not exploited labor, but rather resistance. The relations between the rebellions of both groups appear in the writings of Muhammed Ahmad, Angela Davis, George Jackson, Ruchell Magee, and Assata Shakur, a genre Zuckerwise calls Black carceral political thought. The insights of these thinkers and activists figure into Zuckerwise’s analyses of largescale uprisings and quotidian practices of resistance, which she conceives as acts of world-building, against conditions of forced worldlessness. In a moment when a collective racial reckoning is underway; when Critical Race Theory is a target of the Right; when prison abolition has become more prominent in mainstream political discourse, it is now more important than ever to look to historical and contemporary practices of resistance to white domination.

This book considers two key typifications within the Anglo-American captivity tradition: the Captive Self and the Captivating Other. It analyzes a hegemonic tradition of representation and illuminates the processes through which typifications are constructed, made authoritative, and transformed.

Andrea Tinnemeyer's book examines the nineteenth-century captivity narrative as a dynamic, complex genre that provided an ample medium for cultural critique, a revision of race relations, and a means of elucidating the U.S.?Mexican War?s complex and often contradictory significance in the national imagination. The captivity narrative, as Tinnemeyer shows, addressed questions arising from the incorporation of residents in the newly annexed territory. This genre transformed its heroine from the quintessential white virgin into the Mexican maiden in order to quell anxieties over miscegenation, condone acts furthering Manifest Density, or otherwise romanticize the land-grabbing nature of the war and of the opportunists who traveled to the Southwest after 1848. Some of these narratives condone and even welcome interracial marriages between Mexican women and Anglo-American men. By understanding marriage for love as an expression of free will or as a declaration of independence, texts containing interracial marriages or romanticizing the U.S.?Mexican War could politicize the nuptials and present the Anglo-American husband as a hero and rescuer. This romanticizing of annexation and cross-border marriages tended to feminize Mexico, making the country appear captive and in need of American rescue and influencing the understanding of ?foreign? and ?domestic? by relocating geographic and racial boundaries. In addition to examining more conventional notions of captivity, Tinnemeyer?s book uses war song lyrics and legal cases to argue that ?captivity? is a multivalenced term encompassing desire, identity formation, and variable definitions of citizenship.

Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era

During the Civil War, 410,000 people were held as prisoners of war on both sides. With resources strained by the unprecedented number of prisoners, conditions in overcrowded prison camps were dismal, and the death toll across Confederate and Union prisons reached 56,000 by the end of the war. In an attempt to improve prison conditions, President Lincoln issued General Orders 100, which would become the basis for future attempts to define the rights of prisoners, including the Geneva conventions. Meanwhile, stories of horrific prison experiences fueled political agendas on both sides, and would define the memory of the war, as each region worked aggressively to defend its prison record and to honor its own POWs. Robins and Springer examine the experience, culture, and politics of captivity, including war crimes, disease, and the use of former prison sites as locations of historical memory. Transforming Civil War Prisons introduces students to an underappreciated yet crucial aspect of waging war and shows how the legacy of Civil War prisons remains with us today.

In Wayward Christian Soldiers, leading evangelical theologian Charles Marsh offers a powerful indictment of the political activism of evangelical Christian leaders and churches in the United States. With emphasis on repentance and renewal, this important work advises Christians how to understand past mistakes and to avoid making them in the future. Over the past several years, Marsh observes, American evangelicals have achieved more political power than at any time in their history. But access and influence have come at a cost to their witness in the world and the integrity of their message. The author offers a sobering contrast between the contemporary evangelical elite, which forms the core of the Republican Party, and the historic Christian tradition of respect for the mystery of God and appreciation for human fallibility. The author shows that the most prominent voices in American evangelicalism have arrogantly redefined Christianity on the basis of partisan politics rather than scripture and tradition. The role of politics in distorting the Christian message can be seen most dramatically in the invasion of Iraq, he argues: Some 87% of American evangelicals supported going to war, while every single evangelical church outside the United States opposed it. The Jesus who storms into Baghdad behind the wheel of a Humvee, Marsh points out, is not the Jesus of the Gospel. Indeed, not since the nazification of the German church under Hitler has the political misuse of Christianity led to such catastrophic global consequences. Is there an alternative? This book proposes that the renewal of American churches requires a season of concentrated attention to faith's essential affirmations--a time of hospitality, peacemaking, and contemplative prayer. Offering an authentic Christian alternative to the narcissistic piety of popular evangelicalism, Wayward Christian Soldiers represents a unique entry into the increasingly pivotal debate over the role of faith in American politics. "With Wayward Christian Soldiers, Charles Marsh again shows that he is one of the most astute observers of evangelicalism today." --Jim Wallis, author of God's Politics

An intervention in the field of dissenting writings by women political detainees in India in the 1970s, and it straddles three interlinked areas: politics, prison and writing. It focuses on writings arising out of Bengal's Naxalite movement (1967–1975) and from the pan-Indian period of Emergency (1975–1977).

Microdoses of the straight dope, stories so true they had to be wrapped in fiction for our own protection, from the best-selling author of But What if We're Wrong? A man flying first class discovers a puma in the lavatory. A new coach of a small-town Oklahoma high school football team installs an offense comprised of only one, very special, play. A man explains to the police why he told the employee of his local bodega that his colleague looked like the lead singer of Depeche Mode, a statement that may or may not have led in some way to a violent crime. A college professor discusses with his friend his difficulties with the new generation of students. An obscure power pop band wrestles with its new-found fame when its song "Blizzard of Summer" becomes an anthem for white supremacists. A couple considers getting a medical procedure that will transfer the pain of childbirth from the woman to her husband. A woman interviews a hit man about killing her husband but is shocked by the method he proposes. A man is recruited to join a secret government research team investigating why coin flips are no longer exactly 50/50. A man sees a whale struck by lightning, and knows that everything about his life has to change. A lawyer grapples with the unintended side effects of a veterinarian's rabies vaccination. Fair warning: Raised in Captivity does not slot into a smooth preexisting groove. If Saul Steinberg and Italo Calvino had adopted a child from a Romanian orphanage and raised him on Gary Larsen and Thomas Bernhard, he would still be nothing like Chuck Klosterman. They might be good company, though. Funny, wise and weird in equal measure, Raised in Captivity bids fair to be one of the most original and exciting story collections in recent memory, a fever graph of our deepest unvoiced hopes, fears and preoccupations. Ceaselessly inventive, hostile to corniness in all its forms, and mean only to the things that really deserve it, it marks a cosmic leap forward for one of our most consistently interesting writers.