Punishment and the Phenomenology of Social Identity

• In Event: Roundtable: Incarceration

Abstract

This paper discusses the role of punishment in the contemporary dynamics of social identity, by applying a phenomenological gaze to the question of why we punish. The article starts by examining the relationship between punishment and punitiveness, the latter being usually identified, in contrast with the former, as a potentially dangerous manifestation of the urge to punish, largely seen as problematic in contemporary liberal democratic socio-political settings. However, if punitiveness is considered to be a psychosocial aspect of the emotional dimension of punishment, it can arguably highlight how punishment possesses a rather pervasive function in the constitution and preservation of the ambivalent condition of contemporary social identity. The paper then explores this function through a critical analysis of the dynamics between, on the one hand, the conflictive and structurally violent state of civil society and, on the other, what is here conceptualised as the liberal imaginary of criminal justice, grounded on ideals of individual autonomy and justice. After highlighting the links between punishment and the perplexities of liberal democratic society, this paper concludes by arguing that a proper understanding of punishment as a feature of criminal justice cannot be dissociated from an engagement with issues of social identity.

Author

• Henrique Carvalho, University of Warwick