Necropolitics, Criminalization and Disposability: The New York State Decarceration Debate during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Open Access
Author:
Garcia Godoy, Mariana
Area of Honors:
Communication Arts and Sciences
Degree:
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Abraham Iqbal Khan, Thesis Supervisor Mary High, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
Prisons Biopolitics Necropolitics Debate
Abstract:
The following thesis seeks to contextualize and critically examine the New York State
decarceration debate during the first year of COVID-19 within the frameworks of biopower,
necropower, criminalization and disposability. In addition to communication from the
administration of Governor Andrew Cuomo, this paper engages the voices of other state actors,
the media, advocacy organizations and incarcerated individuals themselves. The choice to use a
variety of frameworks and objects is a deliberate effort to nuance a debate that is infinitely more
complex than freeing or caging people in a deadly pandemic. The ideas and values expressed in
the conversations have origins that are defined in part by hierarchical identities, varying
commitments to authority and forced political compromises. Although COVID-19 has exposed
and exacerbated these dynamics, I argue that they are best understood as legacies of subjugation
and anti-Blackness. My study of this particular debate aims to contribute to a larger conversation
about the ways in which incarceration and criminalization, as mechanisms of control,
characterize our state.
