Therapeutic and Material <Victim> hood: Ideology and the Struggle for Meaning in the Illinois Death Penalty Controversy
2007; Routledge; Volume: 4; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/14791420701632931
ISSN1479-4233
Autores Tópico(s)Torture, Ethics, and Law
ResumoAbstract This article analyzes the struggle over the ideograph following former Illinois Governor George Ryan's decision to commute all state death sentences in 2003. A therapeutic rendering of the ideograph typified mainstream opposition to Ryan's move. This approach personalized the death penalty at the expense of discussing its social and political implications. In contrast, the discourse of George Ryan and his supporters offered a material hood grounded in political, historical, and economic contextualization. By performing a historical materialist critique of this dialogue, I conclude that rhetorically deploying the figure of a material is an indispensable strategy for the abolitionist movement in that it allows activists to capitalize on the ideological constraints of liberalism while maintaining an awareness of capital punishment's implications in a capitalist society. Keywords: Historical MaterialismDeath PenaltyIdeographGeorge RyanTherapeutic RhetoricVictim This article was derived from the author's Master's thesis, completed at Illinois State University in 2004 and directed by Craig Cutbirth. An earlier version was presented at the 2005 annual conference of the National Communication Association in Chicago This article was derived from the author's Master's thesis, completed at Illinois State University in 2004 and directed by Craig Cutbirth. An earlier version was presented at the 2005 annual conference of the National Communication Association in Chicago Acknowledgements In addition to Dr. Cutbirth, the author wishes to thank Dana Cloud, John Baldwin, Stephen Hartnett, John McHale, Joseph Zompetti, editor John Sloop, and two blind reviewers for helpful suggestions and comments. Notes This article was derived from the author's Master's thesis, completed at Illinois State University in 2004 and directed by Craig Cutbirth. An earlier version was presented at the 2005 annual conference of the National Communication Association in Chicago 1. Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz, "Illinois Governor Empties Death Row, Labels State's System a Catastrophic Failure," The Boston Globe, 12 January 2003, A1. 2. Report on the Commission of Capital Punishment, April 2002, http://www.idoc.state.il.us/ccp/ccp/reports/commission_report/index.html (accessed 3 March 2005); Daniel C. Vock, "Justices Consider Legality of Death Row Commutations," Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, 17 September 2003, 1. 3. Dave McKinney and Shamus Toomey, "Ryan's Clearing of Death Row Legal," Chicago Sun-Times, 24 January 2004, 2. 4. Tim O'Neil, "Death Row Commutations Next Door Fire up Debate over Penalty in Missouri," St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri), 19 January 2003, B1. 5. Reynolds Holding, "Historic Death Row Reprieve; Illinois: Gov. Ryan Spares 167, Ignites National Debate," The San Francisco Chronicle, 12 January 2003, A1. 6. For information on corruption charges against Ryan, see Monica Davey and Gretchen Ruethling, "Former Illinois Governor is Convicted in Graft Case," The New York Times, 18 April 2006, 14. For an account of the legislature's failure to adopt the recommended reforms, see George H. Ryan, "Governor George H. Ryan's Address," Center on Wrongful Convictions, 11 January 2003, http://www.law.northwestern.edu/depts/clinic/wrongful/RyanSpeech.htm (accessed 3 March 2005). 7. Clare Howard, "Professor Nominates Former Illinois Governor for Nobel Prize," Copley News Service, 28 August 2004, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe (accessed 6 March 2005); Kevin McDermott, "Illinoisans are Split Closely on Ryan's Commutations; Death Penalty has More, Stronger Support in Missouri than Illinois, Poll Shows," St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri), 7 February 2003, A1. 8. Rob Olmstead, "Governor Signs Death Penalty Reforms, but Moratorium on Executions will Remain in Effect, Blagojevich Says," Chicago Daily Herald, 21 January 2004, 15. A recently defeated proposal would have required that a jury have "no doubt" as to a defendant's guilt before imposing a death sentence. Melissa Jenco, "Doubts Defeat Death Penalty Plan," Chicago Daily Herald, 19 May 2005, 15. 9. Bill Murphy, "Death Row: Status Quo; Texas Undeterred by Illinois' Ripple Effects," The Houston Chronicle, 19 January 2003, 1. 10. The enclosure of terms in carats is the conventional notation style of ideograph analysis and will be used throughout this study. 11. For descriptions of historical materialism, see Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (London: Verso, 1991); Teresa Ebert, Ludic Feminism and After: Postmodernism, Desire, and Labor in Late Capitalism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996); Friedrich Engels, "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific," in Marxism: Essential Writings, ed. David McLellan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 63; Karl Marx, "The Materialist Concept of History," in Marxism: Essential Writings, 3–19. 12. Ebert, 7. Emphasis in original. 13. For an excellent historical materialist analysis of the death penalty, see Eric Ruder, "Death Penalty on Trial," International Socialist Review 11 (2000), http://www.isreview.org/issues/11/death_penalty.shtml (accessed 10 November 2006). 14. For more on the question of judgment and poststructuralism, see Dana L. Cloud, "The Materiality of Discourse as Oxymoron: A Challenge to Critical Rhetoric," Western Journal of Communication 58 (1994): 141–63; Cloud, Stephen Macek, and James Arnt Aune, " 'The Limbo of Ethical Simulacra': A Reply to Ron Greene," Philosophy and Rhetoric 39 (2006): 72–84; Cloud, "The Matrix and Critical Theory's Desertion of the Real," Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 3 (2006): 329–54; Terry Eagleton, After Theory (New York: Basic Books, 2003). 15. Austin Sarat, When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 247. 16. Stuart Banner, The Death Penalty: An American History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); Helen Prejean, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions (New York: Random House, 2005); Sarat. 17. I took these letters from the following regional newspapers: The Chicago Tribune (Chicago), The Chicago Sun-Times (Chicago), The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis), and The State Journal-Register (Springfield). These publications were selected to achieve a wide regional representation of Illinois attitudes on the issue of capital punishment and George Ryan's commutations. The Tribune and Sun-Times are Chicago's major Metro papers with wide readerships. The Tribune is also a nationally distributed paper, reporting Illinois politics to the rest of the country. The Post-Dispatch is also a major paper with wide state (especially southern) readership. Furthermore, the Journal-Register is published in the Illinois State capital, meaning that it is situated at the epicenter of state policy. While this sample size may initially seem small, it should be noted that the Ryan commutations came in the midst of the prelude to the invasion of Iraq, the Michigan State University Affirmative Action controversy, and President Bush's decision about federal funding for stem cell research. Consequentially, publication for letters to the editor, especially for the high-circulation Chicago Tribune, was highly competitive. 18. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), 304. 19. John M. Sloop, The Cultural Prison: Discourse, Prisoners, and Punishment (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1996), 3. 20. In The History of Sexuality, Foucault abandons the traditional Marxist theorizing of an economic basis for all power relationships, encouraging activists and scholars to focus on localized struggles rather than "universals." Various discourses of struggle may intersect from time-to-time but are not necessarily bound to one another. See Foucault, History of Sexuality, An Introduction (New York: Vintage, 1980); "Truth and Power," in The Essential Foucault: Selections from Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, ed. Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose (New York: The New Press, 1994), 300–18. Scholars such as Kevin DeLuca and Ronald Greene claim that rhetoric's constitutive function gives it materiality by virtue of its ability to locate an individual within a social structure. Rather than being interested in questions of objective relations, such critics seek to understand phenomena as they are publicly contested, as such negotiations determine how publics experience race, gender, and other discourses. These scholars reject the traditional Marxist privileging of class as a basis for social struggle, arguing that the fight for hegemony occurs on the surface of various independent "nodal points." See Kevin Michael DeLuca, Image Politics: The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism (New York: The Guilford Press, 1999); Ronald Walter Greene, "Rhetoric and Capitalism: Rhetorical Agency as Communicative Labor," Philosophy and Rhetoric 37 (2004): 188–206; Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, 2nd ed., (London: Verso, 2001). 21. See Amnesty International, United States of America: Death by Discrimination: The Continuing Role of Race in Capital Cases (2003), http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engamr510462003 (accessed 2 March 2004; Michael K. Brown, Martin Carnoy, Elliot Currie, Troy Duster, David B. Oppenheimer, Marjorie Schultz, and David Wellman, Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); "Death Penalty Representation," Death Penalty Information Center, 2006, online at http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=896&scid=68 (accessed 12 October 2005). 22. Michael Calvin McGee, "The 'Ideograph': A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology," The Quarterly Journal of Speech 66 (1980): 5. 23. Michael Calvin McGee, "The 'Ideograph': A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology," The Quarterly Journal of Speech 66 (1980): 6. 24. See, for example, Cloud, "The Rhetoric of Family Values: Scapegoating, Utopia, the Privatization of Social Responsibility," Western Journal of Communication 62 (1998): 387–419; Celeste M. Condit, "The Contemporary American Abortion Controversy: Stages in the Argument," Quarterly Journal of Speech 7 (1984): 410–24; Condit and John L. Lucaites, Crafting Equality: America's Anglo-African Word (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993). 25. Condit and Lucaites, xiii. 26. Cloud. 27. Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973). 28. Charles J. Sykes, A Nation of Victims: The Decay of the American Character (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992), 11–12. While I disagree with Syke's conservative conclusions about ideology, his writing is nonetheless instructive in understanding the as an ideograph in American culture and politics. 29. Foucault; Sarat. 30. C.L. Ten, Crime, Guilt and Punishment: A Philosophical Introduction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). 31. Markus Dirk Dubber, Victims in the War on Crime: The Use and Abuse of Victims' Rights (New York: New York University Press, 2002); Carrie A. Rentschler, The Victims Rights Movement and Anti-Crime Politics (paper presented at the annual meeting for the National Communication Association, Chicago, November, 2004); Jennifer K. Wood, "'In Whose Name': Crime Victim Policy and the Punishing Power of Protection," National Women's Studies Association Journal 17 (2005): 1–17. 32. Robert Elias, The Politics of Victimization: Victims, Victimology, and Human Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 33. Wood, "Refined Raw: The Symbolic Violence of Victims' Rights Reforms," College Literature 26 (1999): 150–69; Lynne N. Henderson, "The Wrongs of Victims' Rights," Stanford Law Review 37, issue 937 (1985), http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe (accessed 11 March 2004). 34. Dubber. 35. Cloud, Control and Consolation in American Culture and Politics: Rhetorics of Therapy (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998), xiii. 36. Cloud, Control and Consolation in American Culture and Politics: Rhetorics of Therapy (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998), 27–28. 37. Cloud, Control and Consolation in American Culture and Politics: Rhetorics of Therapy (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998), 16–17. 38. Theodore Hamm, Rebel and a Cause: Caryl Chessman and the Politics of the death Penalty in Postwar California, 1948–1974 (Berkeley: University of California Press). 39. Wood, "Justice as Therapy: The Victim Rights Clarification Act," Communication Quarterly 51 (2003): 296–7. 40. Sarat. 41. Cloud, "Therapy, Silence, and War: Consolation and the End of Deliberation in the 'Affected' Public," Poroi 2 (2003), http://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/poroi/papers/cloud030816.html#a2 (accessed 12 October 2005). 42. "Death Interrupted: Gov. Ryan Makes a Dramatic Gesture as he Leaves Office," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 20 January 2003, A-10. 43. McDermot. 44. Dianne Atkinson Hudson (Executive Producer), The Oprah Winfrey Show (Chicago: Harpo Productions, 16 January 2003), Television transcript, 7. 45. Dianne Atkinson Hudson (Executive Producer), The Oprah Winfrey Show (Chicago: Harpo Productions, 16 January 2003), Television transcript, 1. 46. Lucio Guerrero, "Prosecutors, Survivors Rip Ryan," Chicago Sun-Times, 13 January 2003, 7. 47. Lucio Guerrero, "Prosecutors, Survivors Rip Ryan," Chicago Sun-Times, 13 January 2003, 7. 48. Lucio Guerrero, "Prosecutors, Survivors Rip Ryan," Chicago Sun-Times, 13 January 2003, 7. 49. "Letters, Faxes, & E-mail," The State Journal-Register, 21 January 2003, 4. 50. "Letters to the Editor: Careful System of Justice is Thwarted," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 16 January 2003, B6. 51. Joseph Napolitano, "Killing in Illinois," Chicago Tribune, 14 January 2003, 22. 52. "Letters, Faxes, & E-mails," State Journal-Register, 13 January 2003, 6. 53. "Letters to the Editor: One Man Overturns the Court System," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 14 January 2003, B6. 54. "Letters, Faxes, & E-mails" The State Journal-Register, 15 January 2003, 6. 55. "Letters, Faxes, & E-mails," State Journal-Register, 14 January 2003, 7. 56. "Letters, Faxes, & E-mails," State Journal-Register, 14 January 2003, 7. 57. "Letters, Faxes, & E-mails," State Journal-Register, 15 January 2003. Italics added. 58. "Letters, Faxes, & E-mails," State Journal-Register, 14 January 2003, 7. 59. "Letters, Faxes, & E-mails," State Journal-Register, 14 January 2003, 7. 60. "Letters to the Editor: Careful System of Justice is Thwarted." Emphasis added. 61. "Letters to the Editor: One Man Overturns the Court System." 62. Phil Grimes, "Justice Denied," Chicago Tribune, 14 January 2003, 22. 63. "Letters to the Editor: Careful System of Justice is Thwarted." 64. "Letters to the Editor: Where's the Justice in Mass Commutation?," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 19 January 2003, B2. 65. "Letters to the Editor," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 23 January 2003, B6. 66. "Letters to the Editor: Careful System of Justice Thwarted." 67. "Letters, Faxes, & E-mails," The State Journal-Register, 15 January, 2003. 68. Shu Shin Luh, "Death Penalty Opponents Rally in City Amid Optimism," Chicago Sun-Times, 11 June 2000, 25. 69. For excellent explanations of the socio-economic implications of capital punishment and other penal institutions, see Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment, ed. Marc Mauer and Meda Chesney-Lind (New York: New Press, 2002); Christian Parenti, "The 'New' Criminal Justice System: State Repression from 1968–2001," Monthly Review 53 (2001): 19–28; Ruder; Eric Schlosser, "The Prison Industrial Complex," The Atlantic Monthly, December 1998, 51–77; Randall G. Shelden and William B. Brown, "The Crime Control Industry and the Management of the Surplus Population," Critical Criminology 9 (2000): 39–62. 70. This discussion of a material should not suggest that more therapeutic rhetorics were not present in pro-Ryan rhetoric. For example, Archbishop Desmond Tutu argued that "To take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, it is not justice. Justice allows for mercy, for clemency, for compassion." Such claims are not concerned about oppressive social structures, but instead privilege a more ineffable morality in challenging the apparatus of capital punishment. Desmond M. Tutu, "A Letter from Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu," Center on Wrongful Convictions, 3 January 2003, http://www.law.northwestern.edu/depts/clinic/wrongful/documents/TutuLet.htm (accessed 11 September 2005). See also, Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., "Open Letter to Governor Ryan," Center on Wrongful Convictions, 31 December 2003, http://www.law.northwestern.edu/depts/clinic/wrongful/documents/RevJacksonLet.pdf (accessed 11 September 2005). For letters to the editor invoking an affective moral theme, see "Letters, Faxes & E-Mail," Chicago Sun-Times, 30 January 2003, 6; Stevens, David L. "Kudos to Ryan for his Stand." The State Journal-Register, 14 January 2003, 7. 71. Representative letters in favor of the commutations include ones written by Timothy W. Crook, Rod and Shelly Hughes, and Rich Schutz. "Letters, Faxes, & E-mails," The State Journal-Register, 2 February 2003, 20; "Letters, Faxes, & E-mails," The State Journal-Register, 14 January 2003, 7; "Bring Back Lake Street Bus for West Side," Chicago Sun-Times, 12 January 2003, 30. 72. Ryan. 73. A few examples: Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions, the organization that prompted Ryan's investigation, details the troubled road that led these individuals to death row, recounting the various injustices which secured the wrongful convictions and death sentences. A recent moratorium in New Jersey rested upon arguments regarding innocence. Sister Helen Prejean's The Death of Innocents documents two executions that were carried out against what she believed to be innocent men. The American Broadcasting Company has launched the television series In Justice, a fictionalized account of a non-profit law agency that investigates cases of wrongful convictions. This show follows the successful play and television movie The Exonerated, which consisted of monologues by former Death Row inmates. 74. Teresa Ebert distinguishes a materialism of embodiment from historical materialism emphasizing the location of bodies in structured social relations of capitalism (see p. 33). See Jack Selzer and Sharon Crowley, Rhetorical Bodies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999) for essays about the significance of embodiment to rhetoric. 75. Ryan. 76. Ryan. 77. Ryan. 78. "Illinois Governor Ryan Congratulated on Death Row Pardonss [sic]: Ryan's Actions Called Direct Contrast to Incoming Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich," National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 11 January 2003, http://www.naacp.org/news/2003/2003-01-11.html (accessed 11 June 2006). 79. "The Issues," The Black Commentator, 16 January 2003, http://www.blackcommentator.com/25/25_issues.html (accessed 11 June 2006). 80. Marlene Martin, "The Real Face of Death Row: A Look Inside Illinois' Broken Death Penalty System," Socialist Worker, 5 April 2002, http://www.socialistworker.org/2002-1/401/401_05_FaceOfDeathRow.shtml (accessed 13 June 2006). 81. Marlene Martin, "The Real Face of Death Row: A Look Inside Illinois' Broken Death Penalty System," Socialist Worker, 5 April 2002, http://www.socialistworker.org/2002-1/401/401_05_FaceOfDeathRow.shtml (accessed 13 June 2006). 82. The CEDP intentionally avoids "moralistic" arguments against capital punishment, focusing instead on "Five Reasons": The death penalty is racist, it punishes the poor, it sentences the innocent to die, it does not deter crime, and it is cruel and unusual. For more information, see http://www.nodeathpenalty.org (accessed 13 June 2006). 83. " 'Victims' Voices': Chicago Event to Highlight Murder Victims' Family Members who Favor Clemency," Death Penalty Information Center, 3 December 2002, http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=1&did=278 (available 13 June 2006). See MVFR online at http://www.mvfr.org/index.htm (accessed 13 June 2006). The website for a similar group, Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights, can be found at http://www.willsworld.com/∼mvfhr/ (accessed 13 June 2006). 84. "Illinois Voters Evenly Split Over Governor's Commutations," Death Penalty Information Center, http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=23&did=210#Illinois (accessed 13 June 2006). 85. Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions claims that, after the 1976 Gregg v. Georgia decision restored capital punishment in the US, at least 38 executions have occurred "in face of compelling evidence of innocence or serious doubt about guilt." See "Executions of Possibly Innocent Persons," Center on Wrongful Convictions, 11 March 2004, http://www.law.northwestern.edu/depts/clinic/wrongful/executingtheinnocent.htm (accessed 13 June 2006). Since 1973, 123 innocent people have been exonerated from death row. See "Innocence: List of Those Freed from Death Row," Death Penalty Information Center, 2006, http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=6&did=110 (accessed 13 June 2006). 86. Olmstead; Jenco. 87. Maria Glod and Michael D. Shear, "DNA Tests Confirm Guilt of Executed Man," Washington Post, 13 January 2006, A01. 88. Barbara Koziak, Retrieving Political Emotion (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2000). 89. For example, see the CEDP's National Speakers Bureau online at http://www.nodeathpenalty.org/speakers.html (accessed 13 June 2006). 90. Cloud, "Therapy, Silence, and War: Consolation and the End of Deliberation in the 'Affected' Public," ¶12. Emphasis in original. 91. Herbert H. Haines, Against Capital Punishment: The Anti-Death Penalty Movement in America, 1972–1994 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Craig Haney, Reforming Punishment (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2006); "Prisoners' Rights: An Introduction," in Cases and Materials on the Law of Sentencing, Corrections, and Prisoners' Rights, 5th ed., ed. Lynn Branham and Sheldon Krantz (St. Paul, MN: West, 1997), 278–86. 92. Banner. Additional informationNotes on contributorsBryan J. McCann Bryan J. McCann is a PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin
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