Abstract:

This article centers public whippings in Delaware. Whereas there is an extensive literature on extra-legal corporal punishments (such as lynchings), comparatively less attention has been paid to public enactments of corporal punishments of African Americans that were authorized by law in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In focusing on the staging of whippings before assemblies of spectators, this article reveals how a theatre of punishment not only enabled a racially specific form of abuse but also normalized (and rendered mundane) societal witnessing of violence against people with brown skin. This study opens with a brief history of whipping in the state, beginning with its colonial roots and concluding in the mid-twentieth century. In emphasizing the long embrace of this uniquely and identifiably Delaware tradition, it spotlights how a myth of egalitarianism—the idea that everyone could be subject to the lash—enabled a public punishment that increasingly and almost exclusively was reserved for Black folk. Further, this article spotlights the scene of state sanctioned whippings—the display of partially undressed bodies, the dynamic between the flogged and flogger, and the reactions of majority white attendees who witnessed the spectacle—to reveal, as Patrick Anderson and Jisha Menon have written, “how violence is specifically performed.”

摘要：

本文以特拉华州的公共鞭刑为中心。尽管有大量关于法外体罚（如私刑）的文献，但对 19 世纪末和 20 世纪法律授权的对非裔美国人的公开体罚的关注相对较少。这篇文章聚焦于在观众集会前举行的鞭刑，揭示了惩罚剧场如何不仅促成了种族特定形式的虐待，而且还规范了（并变得平凡）对棕色皮肤人的暴力行为的社会目击。本研究以该州鞭打的简要历史开始，从其殖民根源开始，到 20 世纪中叶结束。在强调这一独特且可识别的特拉华传统的长期拥抱时，它突出了平等主义的神话——每个人都可能受到鞭打的想法——如何促成越来越多且几乎完全是为黑人保留的公开惩罚。此外，这篇文章重点介绍了国家批准的鞭打场景——展示部分脱衣服的身体、被鞭打者和鞭打者之间的动态，以及目睹这一场面的大多数白人与会者的反应——以揭示，正如帕特里克·安德森 (Patrick Anderson) 和吉莎·梅农 (Jisha Menon) 所写，“暴力具体是如何进行的。”