My ridiculously long video

Sources used:

Asen, Robert. "Imagining in the Public Sphere." Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.4 (2002): 345-67.

DNews. "What Solitary Confinement Does To The Brain." YouTube. YouTube, 14 June 2015. Web. 11 Feb. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE71OCsjaW0>.

Edge, Dan. "FRONTLINE: Solitary Nation." PBS. PBS, 22 Apr. 2014. Web. 11 Feb. 2016. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/solitary-nation/>.

Eilperin, Juliet. "Obama Bans Solitary Confinement for Juveniles in Federal Prisons." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 26 Jan. 2016. Web. 11 Feb. 2016. <https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-bans-solitary-confinement-for-juveniles-in-federal-prisons/2016/01/25/056e14b2-c3a2-11e5-9693-933a4d31bcc8_story.html>.

Frank, Priscilla. "Prisoners In Solitary Confinement Requested Photos Of The Outside World -- And Here They Are." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 20 Sept. 2013. Web. 11 Feb. 2016. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/20/solitary-confinement-phot_n_3950622.html>.

Fraser, Nancy. "Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy." Social Text 25.26 (1990): 56-80.

HuffPost Live. "Actor Robert Knepper Discusses His Role in 'Prison Break'" YouTube. YouTube, 7 Feb. 2013. Web. 11 Feb. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhAE1WchvSQ>.

Keim, Brandon. "The Horrible Psychology of Solitary Confinement." Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 10 July 2013. Web. 11 Feb. 2016. <http://www.wired.com/2013/07/solitary-confinement-2/>.

Obama, Barack. "Barack Obama: Why We Must Rethink Solitary Confinement." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 25 Jan. 2016. Web. 11 Feb. 2016. <https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/barack-obama-why-we-must-rethink-solitary-confinement/2016/01/25/29a361f2-c384-11e5-8965-0607e0e265ce_story.html>.

Palczewski, Catherine Helen., Richard Ice, and John Fritch. Rhetoric in Civic Life. State College, PA: Strata Pub., 2012. Print.

The Paley Center for Media. "Prison Break - Knepper on Violence." YouTube. YouTube, 9 Apr. 2009. Web. 11 Feb. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPTkgFB4gTk>.

Schwirtz, Michael, and Michael Winerip. "Kalief Browder, Held at Rikers Island for 3 Years Without Trial, Commits Suicide." The New York Times. The New York Times, 08 June 2015. Web. 11 Feb. 2016. <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/nyregion/kalief-browder-held-at-rikers-island-for-3-years-without-trial-commits-suicide.html?_r=0>.

Simpson, Brad. "Solitary Confinement Will Make You A Little Crazy. Period. - Prison Writers." Prison Writers. 2015. Web. 11 Feb. 2016. <http://www.prisonwriters.com/solitary-makes-anyone-crazy/>.

Villarreal, Jose. "Solitary Confinement: All That's Left To Do Is Go Crazy - Prison Writers." Prison Writers. 2015. Web. 11 Feb. 2016. <http://www.prisonwriters.com/solitary-confinement/>.

Rough draft for analysis project

***Please note: I'm hoping to present this project in video/audio format, so that may affect or inspire your insights and comments. Also, my apologies for not having specific examples for the rhetorical analysis (I spent too much time on the background), but I've included notes to show where I'm planning to go with a few particular ideas...

The WashingtonPost  reports, “President Obama on [January 25, 2016] announced a ban on solitary confinement for juvenile offenders in the federal prison system, saying the practice is overused and has the potential for devastating psychological consequences.”

Interestingly, Amy Fettig, senior staff counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union and director of the group’s Stop Solitary Campaign, stated, “We rarely have presidents take notice of prison conditions.” (Washington Post)

Okay, so why has Obama taken notice?

Well, my guess is that a discourse about solitary confinement in prisons has given rise to a public sphere—and one big enough to attract the President’s attention.

According to a PBS documentary, solitary confinement “began in America in the 1800s as a progressive experiment to see if isolation would reform criminals. It was soon largely abandoned because prisoners didn’t reform. They lost their minds. But in the 1980s, solitary reemerged as a way to stamp out prison violence” (17:15 min). Well, that and because of rehabilitation cuts and because the prisons were overcrowded (Wired).

Researchers have documented apparent symptoms of solitary confinement in prisoners, which include extreme anxiety, anger, hallucinations, mood swings and flatness, and loss of impulse control. In the absence of stimuli, prisoners may also become hypersensitive to any stimuli at all. Often they obsess uncontrollably, as if their minds didn’t belong to them, over tiny details or personal grievances. Panic attacks are routine, as is depression and loss of memory and cognitive function. (Wired)

The Post states, “An increasing number of studies show a connection between isolating prisoners and higher rates of recidivism.” Don’t gloss over the word connection. To put into scientific terms, this means correlation, and correlations, no matter how strong, can never prove a cause and effect relationship, even in the case of solitary confinement, where the evidence seems convincing. Some prison officers warn of inmates trying manipulation—faking mental illness—to get themselves out of solitary. Still other people argue that inmates who are already predisposed to mental illness wind up in solitary.

Despite the controversy, the overall public opinion towards inmates in solitary confinement seems to have shifted dramatically. The public awareness may have been caught by research findings, but its continued attention appears to be motivated through a changed representation of the inmates in public discourse, which evolved simultaneously with the publication of research.

Examples:

Prison Break television series (beginning in 2005)

The Shawshank Redemption movie, 1994

Prison Writers website, founded 2014, gives inmates a voice/opportunity to contribute to public discourse

***Explain Asen and role of representation/imagination. Also note how different language/terministic screening contributes to a particular representation

***Symbolic action displayed by inmates, as recorded in PBS documentary; along with Prison Writers, points toward a counterpublic. Or would they be actually in the dominant public, since that public seems to be in their favor?

“[T]o convince another person of an idea, purely rational and objective argument is not enough because communication occurs though language that has judgments embedded within it” (Palczewski et al. 54). Basically, language is pathetic by nature—not pitiful like wet-cat-in-the-rain pathetic, but pathetic in the rhetorical sense, relating to emotions. What’s underneath emotion is an expression of values, and we make judgments based on values.

***Explain ideographs referenced in the changing representations

Breaking into a Public

“Although inclusion is indispensable, exclusion is never total. Sometimes, people force their way into public forums and agendas.” Robert Asen, 346

So far I’ve been thinking about public discourse in terms of texts and the speeches, newscasts, and other texts surrounding those. But what about music—isn’t music involved in the discourse as well?

Music has historically been a means for people to communicate and/or make political and social statements—just check out Shostakovich’s protest against Stalin’s regime (such a huge statement even without the aid of lyrics!). If we move a little closer to home, however, we find past music publics that exemplified what Asen discusses regarding collective imagination and representation.

Consider the minstrel songs from the 1830s; when white musicians heard the work songs of plantation slaves, they returned north, painted their faces black with cork (a kind of shoe polish), and performed shows meant to mock African Americans. Asen states that “representation historically has meant both standing for something absent and making something present” (355); through a visual and lyrical discourse, the minstrels represented (inaccurately) a people physically absent from the shows.

 Now, Asen asserts that collective imagining entails “social dialogue [which] enables the formation of opinions that did not exist prior to discursive engagement” (349). The white popular collective imagining of African Americans was turned upside down when confronted with black social/musical “dialogue”:

Most folks in the north had never heard Black music performed by Black musicians. That would change and have dramatic effect when the Fisk University Jubilee Singers  performed in the northern United States in 1867 and then on formal tour with just nine singers in 1871. While people were at first angered that the music wasn’t “minstrel show” style but rather profoundly moving concert music, the impact of actual Black music performed by Black musicians would change everything. (Funk 34)

Not only did black musicians “force their way into public [music] forums,” but they did so with profound effect. White music publics realized that this “new” music was actually quite sophisticated and enjoyable. In fact, Scott Joplin’s ragtimepiano music was a hit in most households across the country, especially after the Stock Market Crash of 1908. Both sheet music and records of the rags were available for purchase. Musicians in military bands even transcribed Joplin’s music into band arrangements (Funk 35).

Interestingly enough, even within the developing jazz scene, the counterpublic of women musicians was still barred from “manly” instruments like trumpet and clarinet and encouraged only to pursue vocals or piano. Hmm—could there be counterpublics to counterpublics? At any rate, it wasn’t until WWII when all-female swing bands swept the country and wrestled with “seeking to advance self-fashioned interpretations of their interests and needs against interpretations imposed by others” (Asen 346). (Perhaps I’ll post more on this later).

The question at the forefront of my mind while reading Asen was, “How do you change people’s minds?” In response to that question, I think Asen would once again emphasize the importance of inclusiveness within publics—even if that inclusiveness was forced from the outside.

Sources:

Asen, Robert. "Imagining in the Public Sphere." Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.4 (2002): 345-67.

Funk, Eric. Sound Thinking: It's ALL Music--How Music Connects With Everything. Kendall Hunt Pub, 2015. Web.