"Doomed to Live": Reading Shelley's Frankenstein and "The Immortal Immortal" with Derrida's Death Penalty Seminars
Date
2019-02-25
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Litteraria Pragensia
Abstract
Drawing upon Jacques Derrida’s recently published two-volume seminar on the death penalty, this essay analyzes two parallel cases from Mary Shelley’s fictions: on the one hand, Elizabeth’s objection to the death penalty in Frankenstein, as she visits Justine Moritz in prison; and on the other hand, the eternal life bestowed upon Winzy in the short story “The Mortal Immortal.” In both cases, the calculations at work necessarily incorporate something incalculable as the punishment becomes “capital.” Shelley objects not just to the cruelty of the death penalty or to the possibility of wrongful conviction, but also to the ways that the law is permitted to draw equivalencies between persons and subject them to a calculation. By thinking of the death penalty and “life penalty” as two sides of the same coin, Shelley effectively deconstructs the logical framework for capital punishment and articulates a complex abolitionist position. Shelley offers, in her fictional interrogation of life sentences and death sentences, a contradictory and bleak set of meditations upon the injustice inherent in human equivalence.
Description
Keywords
Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein, The Mortal Immortal, Derrida, Jacques, death penalty
Citation
Sigler, D. (2019). "Doomed to Live": Reading Shelley's Frankenstein and "The Immortal Immortal" with Derrida's Death Penalty Seminars. "Litteraria Pragensia", 47-59.