Through the Lens of the Documentary the Policy of Death in Prisons

Abstract

The prison is a space where the biopower most clearly prove itself. Prisons, as a mechanism that legitimizes and implements the standards of modern power on life processes, are places that determine “disposable lives” politically, socially, and culturally and make individuals open to death, by containing the disciplinary and coercive techniques that subjugate bodies. Thus, prisons are the most obvious manifestations of the power that authorizes itself over life and death and defines itself concerning the biological field under its control, potentially working together with necropolitics. Moreover, this process is constructed not only by the physical or concrete operation of power but also by narratives that give form and content to the sovereign. At this point, this article deals with the possibility of documentary films have an important function on truth and justice from a human rights perspective by deciphering the sovereign’s narrative. Specifically, the question of how necropolitics organizes itself in prison will be discussed in the scope of Errol Morris’s film entitled Standard Operating Procedure (2008), in which he reveals the systematic dehumanization and torture in Abu Ghraib Prison by referring to the narratives of the perpetrators. © 2023, Turkish Medical Association. All rights reserved.