Porous Penality and the Myth of Liberal Punishment
Lessons from South Africa
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8401722 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Gail Super (0000-0002-4616-4890, University of Toronto, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 64 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 107-123 |
| Publication date | 2024-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The British Journal of Criminology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-0955 • E-ISSN: 1464-3529 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/bjc/azad017 |
| OpenAlex | W4378951503 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
| References cited | 33 |
Drawing on Walter Benjamin, this paper discusses the relationships between law, violence, and punishment. The main argument I make is that state punishment is BOTH a violent and logically contradictory practice and that the state’s legal right to punish often spills over into extralegal penal violence, perpetrated by a range of actors against the racialized poor. I use the term penal violence to refer to all forms of violence which are aimed at enforcing law or punishing a perceived transgression of law or norms. The paper focuses on the infliction of penal violence in South Africa on/in three different scales and jurisdictions: Makwanyane and violence in prisons; police and prosecutorial violence; and extralegal civilian violence
Argument (complex analysis) · Criminal law · Criminology · Mythology · Political science · Punishment (psychology) · Sociology · State (computer science) · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · History · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Legal Issues in South Africa · Psychology · Social Psychology
Modernism and the Grounds of Law
Chronotopes of Law
A General Jurisprudence of Law and Society
The Making of South African Legal Culture 1902–1936
The Dual Penal State
The Will to Punish
Panic City
Life Imprisonment
Law and disorder in the postcolony
Law and Disorder in the Postcolony
Benjamin on the Border
Reflections on Gewalt
Punishment, violence, and grassroots democracy in South Africa—The politics of populist punitiveness
Cars, compounds and containers
What’s in a name and why it matters
Violence and bordering on the margins of the State
Punitive Welfare on the Margins of the State
Here to work
Law in the Margins
Provisional notes on the postcolony
Truth and Reparation for the U.S. Imprisonment and Policing Regime
Community Policing and Disputed Norms for Local Social Control in Post-Apartheid Johannesburg
The Politics of Vigilantism
The Colour of Law, Power and Knowledge
Is the South African Constitution an obstacle to a democratic post-colonial state?1
The Rise and Decline of Urban Apartheid in South Africa
The Liberal Government of Unfreedom
Crime as Social Control
Volatile Sovereignty
Against Politics
Necropolitics
| Unique citing works | 7 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3,5 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2025 (2) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 7 |