Monday, November 4, 2024

Weaponizing Loneliness

Loneliness can be an ephemeral state, but it can also be a deliberate one in various institutional settings. For people who are incarcerated, the experience of loneliness is amplified and weaponized. In 2019, surveys revealed that United States prisons held over 30,000 people in solitary confinement (also known as “restrictive housing”). In most of these cases, prisons used isolation as a means for punishment. In this track of the program, we will explore this dimension of the carceral state and learn about the ways people and programs aim to foster (re)connection and resistance in these systems.

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People

Stephanie Gibson

University of Pennsylvania

Vijay Gupta

Street Symphony

Keramet Reiter

University of California – Irvine

Sarah Shourd

End of Isolation Tour, Pulitzer Center

Discussion Questions

  • How is loneliness weaponized in practices of solitary confinement and infrastructures of incarceration?
  • What do efforts toward its banning tell us about the rhetoric of loneliness as points of concern and control?
  • How have individuals and communities resisted infrastructures of isolation linked to the carceral state?