Thinking About the Audience of Executions

Om seminariet (på engelska)

In this paper I argue that the audience of executions is a critical component of executions and hence has played an important role in the transformation of capital punishment over the past two hundred years. Since the early nineteenth century, the conflict over capital punishment has in large part been waged with and sustained through claims about the audience, thus making the audience a key element in the perception, organization, and delivery of the death penalty. I discuss three modal forms of the execution audience – the crowd, professional witnesses, and family members of murder victims – to highlight the ways in which the audience of executions provides the American death penalty with some of its key meanings and contradictions. All three audience forms have co-existed since the initial concerns arose around the audience in the early nineteenth century, but their respective roles in the execution drama have changed dramatically as have the meanings generates by their presence.