Academic Liberalese: Is it just me, or this PC deconstructionism a foreign language?

emilynghiem

Constitutionalist / Universalist
Jan 21, 2010
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So I was reading this article online about a Princeton professor who reported excessive treatment over an old parking ticket for which her license had been suspended:
Princeton's president speaks out about the arrest of a black professor over a parking ticket

When I get to the part where the Princeton staff are discussing the race perception issue, I run across this term "carcerality" that I decided to look up.

princeton quotes said:

But the larger point is that I'm working to move from being shaken to renewing my commitment to the struggle against racism & carcerality.
— Imani Perry (@imaniperry) February 7, 2016
Princeton's police chief, Nick Sutter, held a public meeting on Monday to address the incident, according to Planet Princeton.
He said that he's reviewed the incident and that police followed the proper protocol. Still, he said he was not trying to shirk responsibility for the perception issue that police departments unfairly target African Americans due to their race.
"Regardless of it being 100% proper in the eyes of the law, there is a perception because of race," Sutter said according to Planet Princeton. "This is a problem for me. It is a problem that is real, and needs to be addressed."

I look up Carcerality or Carceral = relating to prisons
and try to find a usage in context. I find this abstract on "Carceral Feminism"

Carceral Feminism said:
Towards an Understanding of Carceral Feminism as Neoliberal Biopower1 by Sune Sandbeck York University [email protected]

Abstract

The current paper aims to problematize the signifier ‘carceral feminism’, which has come to designate those varieties of theory and praxis that seek to address feminist goals through juridical means and, more crucially, the threat of incarceration (cf. Bernstein 2007; Halley 2008). I begin by surveying some of the recent literature that has identified carceral feminism as a distinct logic within a broader set of liberal feminist strategies focusing on a law and order agenda. My primary contention is that this literature has largely failed to conceptualize carcerality in its two-sidedness as both a technology of discipline and a mode of social production; consequently, the carceral approach must be framed as a feminist strategy that is itself embedded within the ascendancy of a unique mode of neoliberal biopower. The latter has served to mark racialized, feminized and impoverished bodies as abject and remove them from the public sphere, while simultaneously incorporating them forcibly into a distinct strategy of capital accumulation within the prison industrial complex. I conclude by troubling the deployment of the signifier ‘carceral feminism’ and suggest that its contents are strictly filled by a discursively constituted Other, undermining any claims to an actually-existing project of carceral feminism as such and evoking, instead, the spectre of an anti- or post-carceral feminism. Recent literature has claimed to identify a stream of feminism that aims to enforce feminist goals via a law and order agenda, and which specifically relies on incarceration both as punishment and deterrent (Bernstein 2007, 2010; Halley 2008). This ‘carceral’ feminism has been critically appraised as placing the responsibility of the individual at the forefront of its worldview and contributing to the further production of racialized and feminized bodies as abject through its legitimization of the prison industrial complex and other carceral regimes. While accepting some of the extant critiques of feminists who rely on such approaches, the present paper aims to trouble the signifier ‘carceral feminism’ and locate the deployment of carceral strategies within the broader trajectory of neoliberalism as a distinct mode of biopower that is rooted in particular material conditions of accumulation and rule. With Foucault (1978; 2003), I argue that carcerality is part and parcel of a broader set of technologies of power and its uses are circumscribed by the fundamental historical shift towards the biopolitical regulation of the species-body rather than the mere disciplining of the individual body; however, these developments are tied to a material substratum that grounds carcerality as one element within a broader repertoire of apparatuses and technologies employed under neoliberal conditions of capitalist accumulation. What this suggests is that feminists employing carceral strategies are. . .
Now, when I read just this opening paragraph, I find my eyes glossing over the words, looking for a concrete concept and focus. Instead I end up staring at a bunch of words that sound like fancy adjectives and theoretical blah blah blah.

Is it just me? Have I just grown too old and jaded to be reading any of this, and need to go back to the simple A B C's. I actually do care about criminal justice reform, and believe restorative justice is the key to preventing crime and creating a sustainable economy by addressing social ills effectively. It's not that I don't care about the subject of "carcerality" but can't seem to relate to this "wall of text."

Is this what my writing looks like to other people? Just a bunch of words, but where's the meaning. What's the point, and where is it hidden behind all the other language flying by?



 
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So I was reading this article online about a Princeton professor who reported excessive treatment over an old parking ticket for which her license had been suspended:
Princeton's president speaks out about the arrest of a black professor over a parking ticket

When I get to the part where the Princeton staff are discussing the race perception issue, I run across this term "carcerality" that I decided to look up.

princeton quotes said:

But the larger point is that I'm working to move from being shaken to renewing my commitment to the struggle against racism & carcerality.
— Imani Perry (@imaniperry) February 7, 2016
Princeton's police chief, Nick Sutter, held a public meeting on Monday to address the incident, according to Planet Princeton.
He said that he's reviewed the incident and that police followed the proper protocol. Still, he said he was not trying to shirk responsibility for the perception issue that police departments unfairly target African Americans due to their race.
"Regardless of it being 100% proper in the eyes of the law, there is a perception because of race," Sutter said according to Planet Princeton. "This is a problem for me. It is a problem that is real, and needs to be addressed."

I look up Carcerality or Carceral = relating to prisons
and try to find a usage in context. I find this abstract on "Carceral Feminism"

Carceral Feminism said:
Towards an Understanding of Carceral Feminism as Neoliberal Biopower1 by Sune Sandbeck York University [email protected]

Abstract

The current paper aims to problematize the signifier ‘carceral feminism’, which has come to designate those varieties of theory and praxis that seek to address feminist goals through juridical means and, more crucially, the threat of incarceration (cf. Bernstein 2007; Halley 2008). I begin by surveying some of the recent literature that has identified carceral feminism as a distinct logic within a broader set of liberal feminist strategies focusing on a law and order agenda. My primary contention is that this literature has largely failed to conceptualize carcerality in its two-sidedness as both a technology of discipline and a mode of social production; consequently, the carceral approach must be framed as a feminist strategy that is itself embedded within the ascendancy of a unique mode of neoliberal biopower. The latter has served to mark racialized, feminized and impoverished bodies as abject and remove them from the public sphere, while simultaneously incorporating them forcibly into a distinct strategy of capital accumulation within the prison industrial complex. I conclude by troubling the deployment of the signifier ‘carceral feminism’ and suggest that its contents are strictly filled by a discursively constituted Other, undermining any claims to an actually-existing project of carceral feminism as such and evoking, instead, the spectre of an anti- or post-carceral feminism. Recent literature has claimed to identify a stream of feminism that aims to enforce feminist goals via a law and order agenda, and which specifically relies on incarceration both as punishment and deterrent (Bernstein 2007, 2010; Halley 2008). This ‘carceral’ feminism has been critically appraised as placing the responsibility of the individual at the forefront of its worldview and contributing to the further production of racialized and feminized bodies as abject through its legitimization of the prison industrial complex and other carceral regimes. While accepting some of the extant critiques of feminists who rely on such approaches, the present paper aims to trouble the signifier ‘carceral feminism’ and locate the deployment of carceral strategies within the broader trajectory of neoliberalism as a distinct mode of biopower that is rooted in particular material conditions of accumulation and rule. With Foucault (1978; 2003), I argue that carcerality is part and parcel of a broader set of technologies of power and its uses are circumscribed by the fundamental historical shift towards the biopolitical regulation of the species-body rather than the mere disciplining of the individual body; however, these developments are tied to a material substratum that grounds carcerality as one element within a broader repertoire of apparatuses and technologies employed under neoliberal conditions of capitalist accumulation. What this suggests is that feminists employing carceral strategies are. . .
Now, when I read just this opening paragraph, I find my eyes glossing over the words, looking for a concrete concept and focus. Instead I end up staring at a bunch of words that sound like fancy adjectives and theoretical blah blah blah.

Is it just me? Have I just grown too old and jaded to be reading any of this, and need to go back to the simple A B C's. I actually do care about criminal justice reform, and believe restorative justice is the key to preventing crime and creating a sustainable economy by addressing social ills effectively. It's not that I don't care about the subject of "carcerality" but can't seem to relate to this "wall of text."

Is this what my writing looks like to other people? Just a bunch of words, but where's the meaning. What's the point, and where is it hidden behind all the other language flying by?


When deliberate boringness is used as a defense mechanism, you know the bastards have nothing else left.

:afro:
 

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