Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives

by Lisa Guenther

Prolonged solitary confinement has become a widespread and standard practice in U.S. prisons—even though it consistently drives healthy prisoners insane, makes the mentally ill sicker, and, according to the testimony of prisoners, threatens to reduce life to a living death. In this profoundly important and original book, Lisa Guenther examines the death-in-life experience of solitary confinement in America from the early nineteenth century to today’s supermax prisons. Documenting how solitary confinement undermines prisoners’ sense of identity and their ability to understand the world, Guenther demonstrates the real effects of forcibly isolating a person for weeks, months, or years.


Drawing on the testimony of prisoners and the work of philosophers and social activists from Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to Frantz Fanon and Angela Davis, the author defines solitary confinement as a kind of social death. It argues that isolation exposes the relational structure of being by showing what happens when that structure is abused—when prisoners are deprived of the concrete relations with others on which our existence as sense-making creatures depends. Solitary confinement is beyond a form of racial or political violence; it is an assault on being.


A searing and unforgettable indictment, Solitary Confinement reveals what the devastation wrought by the torture of solitary confinement tells us about what it means to be human—and why humanity is so often destroyed when we separate prisoners from all other people.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, History, Crime, Social Science, Law

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[kayleigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars.

“There are many ways to destroy a person, but one of the simplest and most devastating is through prolonged solitary confinement. Deprived of meaningful human interaction, otherwise healthy prisoners become unhinged. They see things that do not exist, and they fail to see things that do. Their sense of their own bodies—even the fundamental capacity to feel pain and to distinguish their own pain from that of others—erodes to the point where they are no longer sure if they are being harmed or are harming themselves.”

I read Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives for one of my psychology courses, so I’m not going to write a full review. However, I will say that it was incredibly interesting, and possibly one of my favorite books I’ve read for a paper so far in my time in college.

[Gebo · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're interested in social death, particularly via solitary confinement, check this book out. In many ways, it's a continuation of Patterson's work on slavery. But this book also details the history of American prison system and details its movement from Quaker reforms to the Supermaxes. The discussion about behavioralism is also fascinating. All around good read here!

Some of the reviews of this book are hilarious: this is one of the most clearly written texts about phenomenology and post-structuralism I've ever read (she really can't make it much simpler without writing a tertiary source about philosophy so you can read this *advanced* philosophy book...).

Anyway, an excellent read that I recommend to anyone interested in solitary confinement or prisons in general.

[Shelly Dee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though this book utilizes a phenomenological methodology of which I am skeptical, the book is clear, compelling and well written. Guenther succeeds in making the case that solitary confinement produces a subject that is doubly-dead while still living. The most successful aspect of this text is the clear way in which she weaves interviews and archival research into the philosophical narrative. A tough and excellent read for anyone interested in the philosophy of punishment, mass incarceration, and solitary confinement.

[Kathleen O'Neal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book for my Contemporary Political Philosophy class and found it very interesting in places, particularly in its focus on the history of behavior modification in the United States and the psychiatric problems faced by inmates in intensive confinement. The book's big failing is the jargon laden nature of some of its discourse, which could be difficult to follow for those of us not well versed in all of the thinkers that Guenther discusses.

[David McDonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Body, thing, and other are not separate substances that exist first for themselves and only later enter into relation with each other; rather, they are mutually constitutive relata for whom the relation comes first; a separate identity emerge only through divergence. This process of mutual divergence leaves in its wake a zone of reverse relationality, or what Merleau-Ponty calls, 'flesh' between myself and the other. Merleau-Ponty calls this zone 'anonymous existence' that belongs neither to myself nor to the other, but to both of us insofar as we participate in a mutually constitutive relationality."

"This social and perceptual depth is precisely what is blocked for the prisoner in supermax confinement: the spontaneous overlapping of perspectives with others, and the anonymity of belonging to a shared world in which one's own unique perceptual perspective is only one among many, where one is a participant in the plurality of the social world."

"Isn't anonymity the problem for a prisoner? Yes and no. Without denying the pain of anonymity," Guenther wants to suggest that, "access to anonymity is part of what sustains a coherent sense of personhood." Thus pointing to a 'death drive' or 'Thanatos' in Freudian terms. "The capacity to withdraw and slip away into the night, disappearing from the gaze of others, releasing oneself from the confines of any particular place, is tantamount to the 'sleep' that, according to Merleau-Ponty, allows me to 'hold the world present to me only in order to keep it at a distance.' and to 'revert to the subjective sources of my existence.'"

Just as unconsciousness sustains consciousness, and sleep sustains wakefulness, so does anonymity sustain a sense of personhood. To what degree is the crime a means, a cry for help, by the prisoner so as to facilitate the means by which (imprisonment -> isolation) they can become anonymous, enter the night, and learn to distance themselves from the world and create a more stable sense of self? This 'redemptive power' prisons used to be viewed with during the time of Benjamin Rush (1700's USA) has turned into something almost purely exploitative and destructive. Political arguments aside, I believe each of us has an innate desire to experience the night, to withdraw from 'the gaze of others' because we instinctively know this is how we develop a stronger sense of self, a stronger identity, a stronger ego. Yet, we feel guilty for pursuing this urge precisely because we know others depend on us to reinforce their own self identities. The struggle to individuate becomes a sort of game we play with each other. The more visible I am to others, the more my personality may tend towards mirroring what others expect of me (or impose onto me) so as to reinforce their own identities. In other words, the more I am around others, the more I tend to conform to their expectations since I am a social creature. Yet, the drive, the instinct to step away and get a breath of fresh air (in Nietzschean terms) persists, as does the guilt associated with this drive. Guilt, which in Christian terms, I feel if my quest to distinguish is in pursuit of anything other than love for thyself and thy neighbour. Just as one may feel guilty for their sexual impulses, so too may one feel guilty for their impulse to 'withdraw into the night;' their impulse to differentiate, individuate, diverge. To frame this impulse within Tilich's Christian-Existentialist framework, one must 'courageously take the anxiety of guilt and condemnation upon themselves' if they wish to individuate. Experience despair, horror, terror, in the form of deeply felt anxiety and angst may very well be the price on pays for becoming an individual. No cost is too great for this endeavour. Iris Murdoch's 'lonely, yet free' version of contemporary existentialist man enters the discussion as well. A man who is 'alien' to her, yet highly prevalent in literature today.

[Chris Nagel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The butler did it.

Alright, alright, I'll be serious.

If you put a gun to my head and demanded that I give you an exemplar of a "critical phenomenological analysis" of something, first, I would suggest that this was the kind of antisocial behavior we should begin to expect in the U.S. of A. (former) under the fascist dictatorship. It's even so far beyond even the typical aggressive academic discursive context as to be almost shocking.

Once the situation was relaxed into something resembling tolerably peaceful dialogue, I would direct you to this book as that exemplar. Lisa Guenther does everything you want a "critical phenomenological analysis" to do. Her subject matter is important, relevant, unique (sadly), timely, and powerful; it is also tremendously fruitful for phenomenological analysis, as she demonstrates. In other words, solitary confinement is a situation that bears a lot of consideration and examination.

Because the topic is so heavy, emotionally, politically, and ethically, it would be easy to fall into several pitfalls or distractions, but she doesn't fall into them. For instance, Guenther could have gone about moralizing, from a position of superiority to the (one might presumed) majority or consensus judgment of citizens of the U.S. of A. (former) who support the use of solitary confinement. Or, she could have become stuck on the emotional awfulness that readers might be expected to feel, faced with the descriptions, evidence, and arguments regarding how inhumane and humanity-destroying solitary confinement is. She makes neither of those mistakes.

The book is much more powerful for that. In addition, the situation of imprisonment and criminal punishment are backgrounded, and the existential phenomenological condition of life is foregrounded. One might certainly expect that solitary confinement is dehumanizing and drives inmates mad. But phenomenologically evoking and analyzing the situation of a person in solitary requires a more careful and thoughtful effort. As a result, Guenther discusses space, time, movement, intersubjectivity, transcendence (in the existentialist sense), the constitution and co-constitution of meaning, Merleau-Ponty's "systems" of self-other and self-world, Levinas' concept of responsibility, and other major themes.

It's so good. You should read it.

[Bouke Van Balen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exciting to see phenomenology and foucauldian power analysis combined. The topic fascinates me too, both from a historical and existential perspective. The book was sometimes repetitive, but I liked the theoretical parts about phenomenological approaches to personhood, temporality, and space. Guenther argues that historical and material power structures shape possibilties to act in and perceive the world, the kinds of time we can experience, and the kind of personhood we have acces to. Losing access to embodied interactions is losing access to yourself as a social being that is intersubjectively consitituted through the gazes and actions of others. It even means losing access to the world as a common and familiar place to be in. Solitary confinement is truelly a gruesome punishment, that affords the punisher to break someone’s personhood down to a liminal, hallucinatory, and uncertain experience of the world, only to build this certainty back up again in the way that He desires.

[Büşra · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incisive critique of solitary confinement from a critical phenomenological perspective. Guenther illustrates how crime and punishment in the United States prison system have been redefined over time, including the meaning of solitary confinement. It was particularly insightful to apply Merleau-Ponty's notion of space to illustrate the inexhaustible dimension of perceptual experience that is blocked by confinement. Despite finding Guenther's call for disinvesting in punishment important for the US context, I'm unsure whether this goal can be politicized and universalized, particularly in a context of impunity.

[Zane · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is the perfect example of applying philosophical theory to real-life issues. I studied this for a phenomenology class at university, wherein my professor is a colleague with Lisa Guenther! So exciting~ Anyways, Guenther draws from the philosophies of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, and Levinas to show how the American penitentiary system doesn't offer prisoners penitence but, through years of solitary confinement, strips them of their humanity on a physical, psychological, and even ontological level. A very poignant and important book; I highly recommend.

[BrighamBH · Rating 4 out of 5]

great insights into critical phenomenology and the suspension of meaning for those we have incarcerated as a society

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book includes a very interesting and informative overview of the use of solitary confinement in the prison system in the US over time. The arguments about the damage of solitary confinement to a person's physical and mental well-being (and therefore, ability to change/improve), are very convincing. The book is very well written and the author carefully guides the reader through her arguments. That said, some of the accompanying philosophy was a little difficult to work through, particularly if you're not familiar with the terminology. Towards the end of the book, the author discusses examples in which some prison administrators have effectively improved prisoner behavior within the framework of solitary confinement. This would be a good topic for a follow-on book.

[Janice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Phenomenology in action.