Lynched Bodies: Politics of Power and Dissent in Spectacles of Violence

Abstract

Lynching is best understood as a form of popular justice and extra-legal punishment through spectacular acts of violence directed at the body of the perpetrator. The crowd is the operative organ in lynching, and, as Canetti rightly points out, the behavior of the crowd needs to be analysed in the light of the working of hunting packs. As hunting packs are united by the prey, lynching crowds have a distinct prey in mind. It is important to delve deeper into the politics of constructing certain humans as prey, as capable of being hunted. Though my point of entry in this paper would be through incidents of black lynching in the United States under Jim Crow, their representation in photographs and literature, particularly in Baldwin’s short story, Going to Meet the Man, I would attempt, here, to shed light on the larger politics of spectacular violence, which is central to acts of lynching across the world. The focus of my paper would be on the political construction of specific bodies as having less value and hence, deserving to be killed or dispensed with, as well as on the spectacles of violence like the lynched body, lynching photographs and narrative descriptions, and the role played by them in the establishment and perpetuation of power structures as well as in offering a voice of resistance against them.