Dignity and the Drama of the Death Penalty1

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between the law and personhood, dispossession and dignity. It asks: How might we move beyond a conception of dignity as the bounded property of the liberal, autonomous agent, toward a more capacious understanding of dignity, as the affective relationality between persons? How does the negative force of the death penalty radiate beyond the condemned and exert its power over their loved ones, family, and even the staff of the prison? What might it mean lose one’s autonomy, a word that derives from the law (nomos) over the self (autos), in the face of the state’s management of life and death? Exploring the moral and legal staging of the death penalty in Chinonye Chukwu’s Clemency (2019) and Boo Junfeng’s Apprentice (2016) this article examines conceptions of personhood when “civility” meets capital punishment.