Abstract
Alexander Berkman’s 1912 Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist is a significant book in the development of American anti-prison politics, not despite, but because of its ambivalent approach to prisons. I trace through Berkman’s book and archive an unresolved tension between two approaches to the prison: advocacy for political prisoners, whereby the prison is a state tool for suppressing radical ideas, and advocacy against the politics of prisons, whereby the prison is an “aggravated counterpart” of social structures and a site of struggle. Berkman’s ambivalence between these approaches amid his memoirs and activism exemplifies the complex development of U.S. thinking on prisons and enduring tensions in contemporary prison politics.
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Subject
Political Science and International Relations,Sociology and Political Science