This Article Abstract Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Rudrappa, S. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Madness, Diasporic Difference, and State Violence

Explaining Filicide in American Courts

University of Texas, USA, rudrappa{at}mail.la.utexas.edu

This article examines the state's mobilization of difference in meting out irrational violence through juxtaposing two filicidal cases, those of Andrea Yates and Sailaja Hathaway. Biological deviance in Andrea Yates's case and cultural difference in Sailaja Hathaway's case are used to administer retributive justice. However, in deciding on the cases of `mad' mothers, the state appears irrationally violent. First, ideas on what is culturally driven and psychotically driven behavior are arbitrary. And second, punishment is not proportional to crime. Yates killed her five children, but was declared innocent by reason of insanity, and is undergoing psychiatric treatment. Conversely, immigrant mother Hathaway's filicidal act did not have long-term physical effects on her two sons, yet she was sentenced to 15 years in prison. This article concludes that demarcating diasporic difference, through cultural testimony in Sailaja Hathaway's case in this instance, abets the state's classificatory and disciplinary functions while simultaneously concealing the state's maddening violence.

Key Words: cultural defense • mad states • postpartum psychosis • South Asian diaspora • state violence

References

• Amnesty International Report (2003) United States of America: Texas — In a World of its own as 300th Execution Looms. Texas, USA.
• Ang, Ian and Brett Louis (2005) `The Predicament of Difference', Ethnicities 5(3): 291—304.[CrossRef]
• Aretxaga, Begonia (2003) `Maddening States', Annual Review of Anthropology 32: 393—410.[CrossRef]
• Bard, Jennifer (2005) `Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic: Why the Incarceration of Individuals with Serious Mental Illness Violates Public Health, Ethical and Constitutional Principles and Therefore Cannot be Made Right by Piecemeal Changes to the Insanity Defense', Houston Journal of Health Law and Policy, Spring.
• Bartelson, Jens (2001) The Critique of the State. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Brooks, Peter (2003) `Policing Stories', in Martha Merrill Umphrey, Austin Sarat and Lawrence Douglas (eds) Law's Madness. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• Brown, Wendy (1995) States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Brubaker, Rogers (2005) `The "Diaspora" Diaspora', Ethnic and Racial Studies 28(1): 1—19.[Medline] [Order article via Infotrieve]
• Byers, Eileen (2004) `Mentally Ill Criminal Offenders and the Strict Liability Effect: Is There Hope for a Just Jurisprudence in an Era of Responsibility/Consequence Talk?', Arkansas Law Review 57: 447—537.
• Cassel, Elaine (2002) `The Yates Verdict and Sentence: Did the Jury Do the Right Thing?' http://writ.findlaw.com/commentary/20020318_cassel.html (accessed 11 July 2005).
• Colb, Sherry (2002) `The Andrea Yates Verdict: A Nation in Denial about Mental Illness', http://writ.news.findlaw.com/volf/20020327.html (accessed 11 July 2005).
• Connell, Michelle (2002) `The Postpartum Psychosis and Feminism: More or Less Justice for Women?', Case Western Reserve Law Review 53: 143—69.
• Denno, Deborah (2002) `Who is Andrea Yates? A Short Story about Insanity', Duke Journal of Gender Law and Policy 10(1): 2—60.
• Essed, Philomena and Theo Goldberg (2002) `Cloning Cultures: The Social Injustices of Sameness ', Ethnic and Racial Studies 25(6): 1006—82.
• Huckerby, Jayne (2003) `Women Who Kill their Children: Case Study and Conclusions Concerning the Differences in the Fall from Maternal Grace by Khoua Her and Andrea Yates', Duke Journal of Gender Law and Policy 10: 149—85.
• Kelly, C. (2002) `The Legacy of Too Little, Too Late: The Inconsistent Treatment of Postpartum Psychosis as a Defense to Infanticide', The Journal of Contemporary Health Law and Policy 19(1): 247—77.
• Manchester, Jessie (2003) `Beyond Accommodation: Reconstructing the Insanity Defense to Provide an Adequate Remedy for Postpartum Psychotic Women', Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 93: 713—51.
• Mbembe, Achille (2003) `Necropolitics', Public Culture 15(1): 11—40.[CrossRef]
• National Mental Health Association http://www.nmha.org/infoctr/factsheets/postpartum.cfm (accessed 9 July 2005).
• National Women's Health Information Center http://www.4woman.gov/faq/postpartum.htm#5 (accessed 8 July 2005).
• Okin, Susan Moller (1999) `Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?', in Joshua Cohen, Matthew Howard and Martha Nussbaum (eds) Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?, pp. 9—24. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• O'Malley, Susan (2004) Are You There Alone? The Unspeakable Crime of Andrea Yates. New York: Simon & Schuster.
• Perlin, Michael (1997) `The Borderline which Separated You from Me: The Insanity Defense, the Authoritarian Spirit, the Fear of Faking, and the Culture of Punishment', Iowa Law Review 82: 1375—1426.
• Povinelli, Elizabeth (2002) The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
• Raitt, Fiona and Suzanne Zeedyk (2000) The Implicit Relation of Psychology and Law: Women and Syndrome Evidence. London: Routledge.
• Razack, Sherene (2004) `Imperiled Muslim Women, Dangerous Muslim Men and Civilised Europeans: Legal and Social Responses to Forced Marriages', Feminist Legal Studies 12(2): 129—74.[CrossRef]
• Renteln, Alison (2004) The Cultural Defense. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Rudrappa, Sharmila (2004) Ethnic Routes to Becoming American: Indian Immigrants and the Cultures of Citizenship. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
• Rudrappa, Sharmila (forthcoming) `Law's Culture and Cultural Difference', in Shamita Dasgupta (ed.) Body Evidence. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
• Satel, Sally (2001) `Editorial', Wall Street Journal (11 Sept.): A26.
• Saunders, Deborah (2001) `Editorial', San Francisco Chronicle (4 Sept.): A15.
• Scheman, Naomi (1997) `Though this be Method, Yet there is Madness in it: Paranoia and Liberal Epistemology', in Diana T. Meyers (ed.) Feminist Social Thought: A Reader. New York: Routledge.
• Sewell, William Jr. (1999) `The Concept(s) of Culture', in Victoria Bonnell and Lynn Hunt (eds) Beyond the Cultural Turn, pp. 35—61. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Spelman, Elizabeth and Martha Minow (1995) `Outlaw Women: An Essay on Thelma & Louise ', in Karen Engel and Dan Danielsen (eds) After Identity: A Reader in Law and Culture, pp. 314—31. New York: Routledge.
• Spencer, Jason (2001) `A Shattered Union, and a Woman Who Feared Shame; Mother, Facing Attempted Capital Murder Charges, is Stripped of Parental Rights ', Austin American-Statesman (24 Nov.).
• Spencer, Jason (2002) `Woman is Found Guilty of Attempt to Kill Sons', Austin American Statesman (27 June).
• Stack, Megan (2002) `Killings Put Dark Side of Mom's Life in Light', Los Angeles Times (8 July).
• Umphrey, Martha, Austin Sarat and Lawrence Douglas (2003) `Madness and Law: An Introduction', in Martha Umphrey, Austin Sarat and Lawrence Douglas (eds) Law's Madness. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• Volpp, Leti (1994) `(Mis)identifying Culture: Asian Women and the Cultural Defense', Harvard Women's Law Journal 17: 57—104.
• Wu, Michelle (2003) `Comment: Culture is No Defense for Infanticide', American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy, and the Law 11: 975—1025.
• Ziek, Slavoj and Glyn Daly (2004) Risking the Impossible: Conversations with Ziek. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Cultural Dynamics, Vol. 19, No. 2-3, 257-277 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0921374007080294


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This Article Abstract Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Rudrappa, S. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?