Ruses of Beneficence and Rituals of Exclusion

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Joan Dayan

Abstract

Just as the terminology of slavery has disappeared from majority legal opinions, the theoretical embrace of academically sanctioned and humane euphemisms has helped to obscure the most radical redefinition of personhood and property since slavery in the Americas. My ghost story, then, should be seen as a necessary ritual or remembrance. As captured in Mumia Abu-Jamal's Live from Death Row or Sister Helen Prejean's Dead Man Walking, the idea of the incarcerated as the living dead is not ancient history.

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