Feminism and Punishment

University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Signs.

http://www.jstor.org

University of Chicago Press

Feminism and Punishment Author(s): Barbara Cruikshank Source: Signs, Vol. 24, No. 4, Institutions, Regulation, and Social Control (Summer, 1999), pp.

1113-1117Published by: University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3175608Accessed: 11-10-2015 18:25 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.30 on Sun, 11 Oct 2015 18:25:14 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Barbara Cruikshank

Feminism and Punishment

If you believe in [capital punishment] for one, you believe in it for everybody. If you don't believe in it, don't believe in it for anybody. - Karla Faye Tucker, December 1997 (quoted in Verhovek 1998)

aria Faye Tucker's L t-menielt, made shortly before she was killed by the state of Texas in 1998, undercuts the liberal feminist argument that one can be opposed to the death penalty and yet continue to hold that

so long as the death penalty is imposed, it should be imposed equally on men and women. However, the target of Tucker's statement was not feminism, as we will see, but the one person who held her life in his hands, Governor George W Bush. Tucker is making a case not for liberal equality before the law but against capital punishment, her own in particular. Nei- ther is she calling the state's legitimacy into question; to my knowledge, interviews with Tucker did not disclose any explicitly political claim against the state or any political motivations for her crime. While her comments were not explicitly political, I suggest that they were strategically aimed at Bush in the final contest over Karla Faye Tucker's life.

In these brief comments, I consider gender as it bears in the strategic contest over the life of the condemned. It is impossible here to fully defend either treating capital punishment as a strategic contest or treating the significance of gender only within that contest. However, it is enough, I think, to realize that capital punishment is a contest in which the condemned often believe they have a chance to win. Moreover, like both Renee Heberle and Timothy Kaufman-Osborn, I understand capital punishment to be a discretionary system of decisions, conflicts, contests, and trials. That means there is always a chance to intervene in the process lead- ing up to death. The condemned are vying for their lives; that is why law books are worth fighting for on the inside.' From death row, Mumia Abu- Jamal explains that jailhouse lawyers make up the largest group in disciplinary units because they are capable of using the law to alter prison condi-

On the struggle for access to law reference materials in prison, see Pens 1998, 231. Mumia Abu-Jamal points out that jailhouse lawyers are singled out for administrative and disciplinary segregation (1998, 191-92). [Signs:Journa ofWomen in Culture and Society 1999, vol. 24, no. 4] ? 1999 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0097-9740/99/2404-0013$02.00


1114 I Cruikshank

tions as well as to affect the outcomes of their own cases. When prisons single out jailhouse lawyers, they too are acting strategically in a contest over the lives and bodies of prisoners. If feminists treat each case as a strategic contest, there is always room for gender to matter differently.

For these reasons, understanding capital punishment as a strategic contest is not cynical. To the contrary, it is optimistic to think that feminists might intervene at any point in a capital punishment case. By considering gender here only as it plays a part in that strategic contest, I do not mean to imply that gender has no deeper meaning or significance. Rather, my point is that, at least as far as feminism is concerned, it is important to concentrate on how gender figures as a part of the strategic contest in which the condemned find themselves. Most important, it is possible that gender could figure at every strategic point, and so it is crucial that the meaning or significance of gender not be fixed in advance.

The strategy that Tucker pursued was to deny the significance of gender in her own case and in relation to her crime: "When we are talking about the crime I committed, gender has no place as an issue" (Verhovek 1998, 3). Yet, given all the publicity that surrounded her execution because she was a woman, how could she say that gender had no place? Moreover, why did she say it? I believe her claims were made to escape death, not to ex- press an article of faith or a principle. Her only chance for salvation in this world was to make an argument that would convince Governor Bush to grant her clemency. Bush claimed that her gender would not figure in his decision because he was determined to apply the law in a liberal way, to the individual qua individual. Gender, or the denial of gender, was a point of resistance for Tucker in the sense that her refusal to see her case as exceptional undercut any justification of her execution that Bush could make based on treating women the same as men. By making her own case against the significance of gender, Tucker was trying to steal Bush's bluster. She knew that if she tried to make the case that women should not be killed, Governor Bush would let her die to demonstrate his own gender- blindness. The two parties denied the significance of gender for opposite reasons. They did so not because either held strongly feminist or antifemi- nist views but because they were caught up together in a contest that nei- ther could win so long as gender was seen to play a part.

Tucker and other notable fundamentalists made the case that she was saved in the eyes of God. As a born-again believer, she would supposedly no longer be capable of murder and mayhem. This defense, however, de- pended on overcoming the dominant media interpretation of her case as gendered. Unable to do so, it could be said, Tucker was executed. Despite Tucker's salvation in the eyes of God and her redemption within a commu-


S I G N S Summer 1999 I 1115

nity of notable fundamentalists, she faced the ultimate condemnation in this life. The dissonance between the saved Tucker and the condemned Tucker did not work to offer Bush an alternative to gender as grounds for a stay of execution. (Perhaps only a religious fundamentalist could think it was possible to redeem Tucker and erase the public significance of her gender by restoring her to the community of the faithful.) Though her strategy failed, it makes clear that gender does not matter systematically but that it does matter strategically.

Instead of arguing as Heberle does that women are "embodiments of sex," or that gender is solidified "on the outside," I hold (as does Kaufman- Osborn) that gender confusion reigns in all kinds of contests that are ongoing within the liberal state. Gender is not something that we inhabit or embody so much as something we negotiate on an ongoing basis within the context of power relations. While systems of control on the outside subject women in particular ways, I suspect that gender, far from being stabilized by extralegal social hierarchies, continues to undergo radically destabilizing conflicts. That makes gender available to all sides in any contest, which, in turn, means that the variability of gender presents both dan- gers and powerful possibilities to the strategies of the condemned and of the state.

Gender should not be expected to matter strategically in the same way again. For example, the execution of Judy Buenoano in Florida followed shortly after that of Tucker, yet none of the same kinds of contests over gender made her execution debatable. Nevertheless, it seems to me that Buenoano was not "divested" of her gender identity when she was killed, as Kaufman-Osborn puts it, so much as she was never vested in the first place. Signs readers will understand what I mean when I say that not all women are "women." Nor should gender be expected to matter only in the context of political posturing and media discourses. In the strategic contest over the life of the condemned, gender could figure in any number of possible terrains of action. In their isolation, especially in lock-down units, the condemned tend to focus their strategies on the law. Yet, in addi- tion to the law and to the possibility of physical resistance such as riots, hunger strikes, and labor strikes, there are several terrains of contestation open to the condemned. Although none can offer stable ground to the condemned, these avenues do suggest strategies in which gender could possibly make the difference between life and death.

First, prisoners have their bodies. While both men's and women's bodies and sexualities are commodities in the political economy of power and desire on the inside, women's prisons are famous for recreating ties of kinship and sustaining sexual relationships among women. Tucker was


1116 I Cruikshank

exceptional in that she married the prison minister, which no doubt limited her relationships with other prisoners. Women are condemned to death or to life in prison most often for the murder of their own children, lovers, and husbands, and they recreate those types of relations in prison. If same- sex marriage were legalized, for example, partnerships in prisons could become significant in capital punishment cases. Also, if a woman on death row could somehow become pregnant, it is possible that she could avert any immediate attempts on her life. Nevertheless, women's bodies are not uniformly gendered. The genders of masculine women and lesbian butches, for example, would have significantly different strategic value than more traditionally feminine genders. While sexual, kinship, and gang relationships on the inside might possibly have strategic value, there are certainly grounds to think that they are as likely to be liabilities as they are on the outside.

Contacts on the outside also present the possibility of wielding influ- ence in the discretionary and convoluted system of execution. It is ex- tremely rare for prisoners to have the kinds of contacts that Tucker had in the ranks of fundamentalists, yet they certainly helped to bring publicity to her case. The often extraordinary solidarity of outsiders with political prisoners demonstrates only that public pressure can effect either a stay or an acceleration of an execution, depending on the circumstances. The solidarity that feminists might feel with a certain prisoner could result in a large-scale movement for amnesty or clemency. However, to my knowledge, there is no feminist case against capital punishment that could possibly unite feminists either on the issue or on particular cases. Nevertheless, political solidarity might alter the strategic field for the condemned.

Finally, and perhaps most powerfully for the relatively powerless, prisoners can tell their stories. Recently, the incredible commodification of biographies and "true stories" has even affected sentencing, which may now explicitly prevent certain prisoners from profiting from book and movie deals. The story of Aileen Wuornos, for example, became a com- modity before she was convicted. Indeed, if Wuornos is correct, the selling of her story was a good part of the reason she was convicted. Touted as the first lesbian serial killer, Wuornos saw her story manipulated by every- one she came into contact with. In a court outburst, she vowed to expose the corruption of the police and the courts and their complicity in creating a story that would sell. Nevertheless, on a subcultural level, Wuoros is a heroine for killing men who posed a threat to prostitutes. Similarly, feminists have defended women who kill their batterers by retelling their stories with a feminist twist. Outlaw narratives in films such as Thelma and Louise


S I G N S Summer 1999 I 1117

and Bound suggest the possibility that feminist narratives could be turned to strategic purpose in particular cases.

Indeed, virtually any case could be transformed into a feminist narrative. When women end up on death row, they have committed the ultimate act of their personal liberation from the restrictions of parenting, responsible citizenship, and labor. As Michel Foucault (1977) so famously argued, crime is one way to call the existing order into question. The danger of such retellings is that they fix gender in ways that could be dangerous to the condemned. To tell a story that is always open to contestation and hence always of strategic use is improbable. In order to make sense on one cultural plane - say, Hollywood - it would be necessary to destroy the resonance of a story on another- say, a sexual subculture. Still more improbable is telling the story in a way that sustains the voice of the condemned herself. Tucker found her voice projected by religious fundamentalists, but who knows how that sounded to her ears?

I am not convinced, as Tucker said she was, that one's moral position on capital punishment is the central issue or that appeals to moral con- science might sway the populace to call for an end to capital punishment. Much as I would like to be able to persuade the reader that capital punishment is wrong, any moral or humanist argument I might make about the value of life is pointless in the present context, in which a substantial major- ity is calling for blood. Capital punishment is not a strategic contest in which morality has no part; it is one in which appeals to morality are themselves a part of the contest.

Department of Political Science University of Massachusetts, Amherst

References Abu-Jamal, Mumia. 1998. "Campaign of Repression." In The Celling ofAmerica:An

Inside Look at the US. Prison Industry, ed. Daniel Burton-Rose, 191-92. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press.

Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Penguin.

Pens, Dan. 1998. "Hungry for Justice in L.A." In The Celling ofAmerica:An Inside Look at the US. Prison Industry, ed. Daniel Burton-Rose, 231. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press.

Verhovek, Sam Howe. 1998. "Dead Women Waiting." New York Times, February 8, sec. 4, p. 1.


Article Contentsp. [1113]p. 1114p. 1115p. 1116p. 1117

Issue Table of ContentsSigns, Vol. 24, No. 4, Summer, 1999Volume Information [pp. 1145 - 1161]Front Matter [pp. 1137 - 1143]Editorial [pp. 857 - 868]Interpellating Sex [pp. 869 - 893]Regulating "Maternal Instinct": Governing Mentalities of Late Twentieth-Century U.S. Illicit Drug Policy [pp. 895 - 923]Civilian Threat, the Suburban Citadel, and Atomic Age American Women [pp. 925 - 958]Crimes and Pardons: Bourgeois Justice, Gendered Virtue, and the Criminalized Other in Eighteenth-Century France [pp. 959 - 1010]Contesting the Illicit: Gender and the Politics of Fatwas in Bangladesh [pp. 1011 - 1044]Pre-Modern and Modern Power: Foucault and the Case of Domestic Violence [pp. 1045 - 1066]Symposium: Virtually Regulated: New Technologies and Social ControlIntroduction [pp. 1067 - 1068]Virtual Fears [pp. 1069 - 1078]Virile-Reality: From Armageddon to Viagra [pp. 1079 - 1087]Racialized Fantasies on the Internet [pp. 1089 - 1096]

Symposium: Gender and the Death PenaltyIntroduction [pp. 1097 - 1102]Disciplining Gender; Or, Are Women Getting Away with Murder? [pp. 1103 - 1112]Feminism and Punishment [pp. 1113 - 1117]Reviving the Late Liberal State: On Capital Punishment in an Age of Gender Confusion [pp. 1119 - 1129]

United States and International Notes [pp. 1131 - 1135]Back Matter

Feminism and Punishment

Documents

Transcript of Feminism and Punishment