A Lingual Politic: Power and Resistance in Sacred, Secular, and Subaltern Narratives in an Age of Mass Incarceration

Abstract

This article submits that the confluence of language and power proliferate social strata and exacts violence on subaltern bodies in a punitive age of mass incarceration. I explore racialized social hierarchies in Judeo-Christian sacred texts and its relationship to secular texts that mark subaltern bodies for punishment. I argue that hegemonic scriptural economies perpetuate discursive violence that is evident in the imperial use of jurisprudence to warehouse latina/o bodies in a prison industrial complex. In response, proclamations of protest become the voice of victors to self-name, overcome silence and rewrite histories as authors of subaltern narratives of resistance. Keywords : Sacred texts, Legal texts, Social regulation, Subalternity, Racism, Narrative of resistance, Punishment, Mass Incarceration.