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Cruel and Unusual : Punishment and U.S. Culture by Brian Jarvis (Author) is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

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<br> From the excesses of Puritan patriarchs to the barbarism of slavery and on into the prison-industrial complex, punishment in the US has a long and gruesome history. In the post-Vietnam era, the prison population has increased tenfold and the death penalty has enjoyed a renaissance. Few subjects in contemporary US society provoke as much controversy as punishment. In this context, Cruel and Unusual aims to offer the first comprehensive exploration of the history of punishment as it has been mediated in American culture. Grounding his analysis in Marxist theory, psychoanalysis and Foucault’s influential work on discipline, Brian Jarvis examines a range of cultural texts, from seventeenth century execution sermons to twenty-first century prison films, to uncover the politics, economics and erotics of punishment. This wide-ranging and interdisciplinary survey constructs a genealogy of cruelty through close reading of novels by Hawthorne and Melville, fictional accounts of the Rosenberg execution by Coover and Doctorow, slave narratives and prison writings by African Americans and the critically neglected genre of American prison films. In the process, Cruel and Unusual unmasks a f

Who reads Cruel and Unusual : Punishment and U.S. Culture?

Author

Brian Jarvis (Author)

Publisher

PLUTO; Pluto Press

Published

2004

Language

EN

ISBN

9781281725080

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Literary Fiction, History, Sociology

Rating

4.5 / 5 (2 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14