Law, Culture and the Humanities
Volume 15, Issue 2, 2019, Pages 516-539

The detainee, the prisoner, and the refugee: The dynamics of violent subject production (Article)

Nieminen K.*
  • a University of Helsinki, Faculty of Law, P.O. Box 4, Helsinki, FI-00014, Finland

Abstract

This article takes violence in the law seriously, scrutinizing three sites engaged in violent subject production and resistance: the Guantanamo Bay detention center, supermax prisons in the US, and European refugee camps. The concepts of martyring and torturing serve help to untangle the dynamics of the law’s violence. The violent subject production techniques used in these sites are discussed as torture practices that aim to reproduce the dominant subjectivity. As the law has often proved unable to fully address the situation of the detainee, the prisoner, and the refugee, hunger striking as martyring is discussed as a way to deconstruct hegemonic subjectivity and to force the law to face its own violence. © The Author(s) 2016.

Author Keywords

Martyr Resistance Refugee camp Guantanamo Bay Torture violence Law Detainee Supermax prison Prisoner Hunger strike Refugee Subjectivity

Index Keywords

[No Keywords available]

Link
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85066310339&doi=10.1177%2f1743872116650868&partnerID=40&md5=0c834c923e7c2b02e5c94af467d0bb87

DOI: 10.1177/1743872116650868
ISSN: 17438721
Original Language: English