Vanderbilt University

Faculty Member, Philosophy

About

I am currently working on a phenomenological critique of solitary confinement, drawing on the work of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, as well as legal and historical documents in the history of the US penitentiary system, supermax prisons and detention camps such as Guantanamo Bay. Deprived of regular contact with concrete others in a shared space, many prisoners come unhinged from reality; they experience perceptual distortions and hallucinations, they lose track of time, and they even become unable to identify the boundaries of their own bodies. What must subjectivity be like in order for these effects to be possible? Who are we, such that we can be undone in this way, unhinged from ourselves by being separated from others? What ends are served by isolating prisoners to the point of psychological and even ontological derangement?

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