Freeing the Carceral Imagination: Prisons, Criminalization, and the Ruse of Righteous Violence

The carceral imaginary explains Americans’ stubborn attachment to or at least acceptance of prisons, both in the hyperbolic tough-on-crime practices and in seemingly progressive sectors. Joining a critical reading of John Locke with theorists of storytelling, the imaginary, decolonial theory, and carceral logic, Shari Stone-Mediatore brings new philosophical resources to bear on the question of how Americans have become so attached to punishment-based social policies despite the failure of our vast network of prisons to protect us from harm.Stone-Mediatore argues that, alongside the political and economic forces driving prison expansion, a carceral imaginary in which we have become deeply invested emotionally has bonded our imaginations to carceral myths and prevented us from thinking meaningfully about safety and justice.Tracing a pattern in the violence-rationalizing myths studied by Frantz Fanon, Enrique Dussel, James Baldwin, and Ida B.Wells, Stone-Mediatore develops a theory of th