Mariah Partida - Solitary Confinement, Intercorporeal Being-in-the-world, and the Mutability of Consciousness

Season 9 concludes with a recording from our 2024 annual conference, Embodiment and History.

This episode features a presentation from Mariah Partida

Abstract:

My presentation will take a critical-phenomenological approach to examining the intertwining of the physical and psychological pain caused by prolonged solitary confinement. Amending classical phenomenology’s focus on the transcendental conditions of possibility for experience as such, critical phenomenology broadens its considerations to include social, political, and historical factors that can allow for a more apt characterization of the peculiar form of suffering induced by such extreme methods of carceral isolation (Guenther, 2019). One question that frequently arises in discussions of solitary confinement is whether it amounts to torture, and there is a growing consensus among researchers that the answer is “yes.” For example, EEG-like tests from detention camps in the former Yugoslavia reveal that without sustained social interaction, the human brain may become as impaired as one that has suffered a traumatic brain injury (Gawande, 2009). Similarly, Catherine Malabou (2007) argues that the behavior of victims of sociopolitical traumas display striking similarities to that of individuals who have suffered brain lesions. Malabou refers to both types of victims as the “new wounded.” She insists that these individuals, having undergone severe shock to their affective brain, display posttraumatic personality changes characterized by disaffection and indifference. Albert Woodfox’s autobiographical narrative of his decades-long incarceration in a six-by-nine-foot cell at Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison parallels Malabou’s description of the new wounded. He states, “I had to shut my emotional system down. I buried my emotions, so that things that would normally touch me or move me didn’t touch me or move me” (Woodfox, 2019). Since the lasting psychical anguish brought about by solitary confinement all too closely resembles the enduring bodily scars left by physical torture, the question for critical phenomenology, as a transformative political practice, is: how can its philosophical resources assist in abolishing such an oppressive and debilitating practice?

Further Information:

This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2024, co-organised with University of the West of England. The conference was held in Bristol on the theme of 'Embodiment and History'. Biographical information