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Confined to the Margins: Necropolitics, American Identity, and Racial Separation in Assata by Assata Shakur

  • Berit Brink

    Berit Brink is an Assistant Professor of American Literature at the Faculty of Humanities, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her research focuses on American and African American literature, with a special emphasis on the ways in which place and space shape identity, resistance, and radical imagination. Through the lens of literary and cultural history, particularly during and after the 1960s, her work explores the ways in which marginalized communities contest spatial boundaries, reimagine belonging, and use artistic expression as a tool for social and political transformation.
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Narratives of Confinement in American Popular Culture
This chapter is in the book Narratives of Confinement in American Popular Culture

Abstract

This chapter uses Achille Mbembe’s notion of ‘necroplitics’ to examine the literal and figurative ways in which Black Americans have been confined to separate spaces since the 1970s. Taking Assata Shakur’s trials as a case study, I will show that the process of socio-spatial separation was not just a consequence of the failure to include African Americans into the ideal of a liberal humanist democracy, but also its cause. The discrepancy between freedom rhetoric on the one hand, and the suppression of racial Others on the other hand, signaled a limited ontology of blackness as threatening. The clash between the Black Panthers and the state marked the beginning of a shift in perspective regarding the value of black lives, as it set into motion a dialectical relationship between the ‘necropolitics’ at the heart of America’s founding ideal, and those resisting these politics. The Panthers’ purposeful hypervisibility marked a rejection of necropolitical policy that confined them to the margins of society and could thus be construed as a demand to be included into America’s liberal humanist imaginary.

Abstract

This chapter uses Achille Mbembe’s notion of ‘necroplitics’ to examine the literal and figurative ways in which Black Americans have been confined to separate spaces since the 1970s. Taking Assata Shakur’s trials as a case study, I will show that the process of socio-spatial separation was not just a consequence of the failure to include African Americans into the ideal of a liberal humanist democracy, but also its cause. The discrepancy between freedom rhetoric on the one hand, and the suppression of racial Others on the other hand, signaled a limited ontology of blackness as threatening. The clash between the Black Panthers and the state marked the beginning of a shift in perspective regarding the value of black lives, as it set into motion a dialectical relationship between the ‘necropolitics’ at the heart of America’s founding ideal, and those resisting these politics. The Panthers’ purposeful hypervisibility marked a rejection of necropolitical policy that confined them to the margins of society and could thus be construed as a demand to be included into America’s liberal humanist imaginary.

Chapters in this book

  1. Acknowledgments 5
  2. Table of Contents 7
  3. Confinement Studies in American Popular Culture 1
  4. Part I: Confinement Narratives on the Screen
  5. Cinema and TV Series
  6. The Individual vs. the Institution: Narratives of Confinement in New Hollywood Cinema 15
  7. Trapped in Bluebeard’s Castle: Disney’s Beauty and the Beast as a Self-Contradictory Story of Empowerment and Imprisonment 31
  8. (Dis)‌ableing the Confinement: Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water and Mark Medoff’s Children of a Lesser God 47
  9. Transformative Power of Confinement and Subversion of Identity in The Experiment (2010) 63
  10. “Where the City Started and the Suburbs Ended”: The (Sub)‌urban Confinement of Post-Industrial America in David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows 87
  11. Never Let Me Go: Home, Family, and Confinement in Umma 103
  12. Confinement and Consciousness: Exploring the ‘ Nomadic Consciousness’ in Maid 117
  13. Documentaries
  14. Incarceration Documentaries after the Curious Eclipse of Prison Ethnography 133
  15. Dream in Place: Understanding Confinement through the Tactics of Fiction in Crystal Moselle’s The Wolfpack 151
  16. Part II: Confinement Narratives from/about American Prisons
  17. Claudia Jones and Angela Davis: Literature in Confinement 171
  18. Confined to the Margins: Necropolitics, American Identity, and Racial Separation in Assata by Assata Shakur 185
  19. Into the Lone Star Labyrinth: Texas Prison System Reflects The Death Gate Cycle Prison 201
  20. Our Time on the Rock: Narrating Voluntary Confinement in Tommy Orange’s There There 217
  21. “Have You Ever Seen a More Focused Killing Machine?” The Extreme Spectacle of Carceral Punishment in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All-Stars 235
  22. Part III: Confinement Narratives within Performances
  23. Taylor Swift’s American Retreat: Covid, Cardigans, and Confinement in folklore 253
  24. In The Devil's Grip: Competing Narratives of Confinement in X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X Opera 269
  25. Index
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111474137-013

Chapters in this book

  1. Acknowledgments 5
  2. Table of Contents 7
  3. Confinement Studies in American Popular Culture 1
  4. Part I: Confinement Narratives on the Screen
  5. Cinema and TV Series
  6. The Individual vs. the Institution: Narratives of Confinement in New Hollywood Cinema 15
  7. Trapped in Bluebeard’s Castle: Disney’s Beauty and the Beast as a Self-Contradictory Story of Empowerment and Imprisonment 31
  8. (Dis)‌ableing the Confinement: Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water and Mark Medoff’s Children of a Lesser God 47
  9. Transformative Power of Confinement and Subversion of Identity in The Experiment (2010) 63
  10. “Where the City Started and the Suburbs Ended”: The (Sub)‌urban Confinement of Post-Industrial America in David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows 87
  11. Never Let Me Go: Home, Family, and Confinement in Umma 103
  12. Confinement and Consciousness: Exploring the ‘ Nomadic Consciousness’ in Maid 117
  13. Documentaries
  14. Incarceration Documentaries after the Curious Eclipse of Prison Ethnography 133
  15. Dream in Place: Understanding Confinement through the Tactics of Fiction in Crystal Moselle’s The Wolfpack 151
  16. Part II: Confinement Narratives from/about American Prisons
  17. Claudia Jones and Angela Davis: Literature in Confinement 171
  18. Confined to the Margins: Necropolitics, American Identity, and Racial Separation in Assata by Assata Shakur 185
  19. Into the Lone Star Labyrinth: Texas Prison System Reflects The Death Gate Cycle Prison 201
  20. Our Time on the Rock: Narrating Voluntary Confinement in Tommy Orange’s There There 217
  21. “Have You Ever Seen a More Focused Killing Machine?” The Extreme Spectacle of Carceral Punishment in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All-Stars 235
  22. Part III: Confinement Narratives within Performances
  23. Taylor Swift’s American Retreat: Covid, Cardigans, and Confinement in folklore 253
  24. In The Devil's Grip: Competing Narratives of Confinement in X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X Opera 269
  25. Index
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