Critical Theory Emphasis

QUESTIONS OF RESPONSIBILITY: PARDON, PERJURY AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT (LE PARDON, LE PARJURE, ET LA PEINE DE MORT)

In continuing the past years' seminars ("Questions of responsibility, pardon, and perjury"), we will take up this year, under the heading of l'impardonnable (the unpardonable), the question of la peine de mort (capital punishment).

We will begin by studying its history, juridical and political dimensions, the present stakes of its abolishment (in the process of mondialisation ("globalization"), particularly in the United States).  We will also study the "scene," the dramaturgy, the history of its visibility and of its "public" character generally, but also its
representation in the arts of theater, painting, photography, cinema, and, of course, literature.
Intertwined in this first approach will be two leading threads:  the equivocal concepts of "cruelty" and of "exception," which play a determining role in juridical discourse (for and against capital punishment).
On the horizon the big question of sovereignty in general, of sovereignty of the State in particular.
Bibliography (to be specified more precisely during the course of the seminar): 

The Bible (Exodus 20 and the Gospels; Bible references in Schabas); Plato, Crito, Apology, The Laws; Rousseau, The Social Contract; Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishment; Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals; Victor Hugo, Écrits sur la peine de mort; Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals; Maurice Blanchot, "Literature and the Law of Death" in The Work of Fire; Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty; Camus, "Reflections on the Guillotine" in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death; Jean Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers, The Man Condemned to Death, and The Miracle of the Rose; Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison; Robert Badinter, L'exécution; William Schabas, The Abolition of the Death Penalty in International Law; Sister Helen Prejean, Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States.

Additional Titles:  John Locke, "Of Political or Civil Society," "Of the Beginning of Political Societies," and "Of the Ends of Political Society and Government" in Second Treatise on Government; Voltaire, "Du Meurtre", in Prix de la justice et de l'humanité; Percy Bysshe Shelley, On the Punishment of Death; Wordsworth, "Sonnets Upon the Punishment of Death"; Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories; Walter Benjamin, Critique of Violence; Daniel Arasse, La guillotine et l'imaginaire de la terreur and La Guillotine dans la Révolution; Robert Badinter, "Beccaria, líabolition de la peine de mort, et la Révolution française" in Revue de science criminelle, 1989; Jean Imbert, La peine de mort; Peter Linebaugh, "Politics of the Death Penalty (Gruesome Gertie at the Buckle of the Bible Belt)" in New Left Review; Austin Sarat ed., The Killing State, Capital Punishment in Law, Politics, and Culture; Hugo Adam Bedau ed., The Death Penalty in America, Current Controversies; Mumia Abu-Jamal, Live from Death Row; Derrida, "Demeure, Athènes", in Jacques Derrida and Jean-François Bonhomme, Athènes à l'ombre de l'Acropole; Amnesty International, "The Death Penalty: An Affront to Our Humanity" in 1999 Annual Report.

Notes:  The lectures are open to everyone.  The Tuesday seminar is open only to those students enrolled in the seminar; auditors are allowed only by permission of Professor Derrida.  Enrollment in the seminar is through TELE.  Copies of all works will be on reserve in the library.  The Amnesty International Annual Report 1999 is available online at:  http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/aireport/ar99/index.html.  A more detailed bibliography is available from Barbara Cohen in HIB 403.