Re: Reading Ashley Smith: Critically Unpacking Government By
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Re: Reading Ashley Smith: Critically Unpacking Government by Discursive Figures of Ashley as Girl Produced in the Smith Case By Rebecca Bromwich A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario 2015 © 2015 Rebecca Bromwich Abstract In this dissertation, I explore how Ashley Smith has become socially understood as a “case.” I perform a critical discourse analysis of figures of Ashley Smith as technologies of governance. I argue that the Smith case ought not to be read as a case of anomalous system failure but as an extreme, but foreseeable, result of the routine and everyday brutality of a society and bureaucracies’ necropolitical security apparatus. I map a chronological trajectory in which the “official story” of Inmate Smith gives way through the process of celebritization and sacralization of “Child Ashley” to a widely accepted understanding of Ashley Smith as a mislocated mental health subject: “Patient Smith.” This analysis reveals that seeming progressive turn to understanding her as a victim of a failed system of mental health leaves intact, and even reinforces, logics and systems of gender, security, risk, race thinking and exclusion that make her death and the death of other prisoners predictable. I demonstrate how the logics of risk, mental health and legal discourses in the juridical field intersected with discourses of the girl in ways that made alternative readings and Ashley Smith’s own narration of her story illegible and unwritable. Further, I argue that certain operating logics predetermine the labeling of properly constituted adolescent girls’ noncompliance as madness and adolescent boys’ noncompliance as criminality. This analysis further calls into question the foundations of the statistical discrepancy between criminal charge rates for adolescent boys and girls. This dissertation seeks to intervene in these intersecting governmental logics that write “girls in trouble with the law” in particularly damaging ways. Acknowledgements Acknowledgements Writing is a conversation with life. -Julia Cameron The Artist’s Way I dedicate this dissertation to the ghosts who were with me as I wrote it. First, to my much missed friend Deb Shelly because, and she would smile to read this, friendship is magic. She was my longtime colleague in the law, friend in life, and partner in what she called “intellectual fierceness”. Had she not passed away while I was writing this dissertation, Deb would have made good on her offer to read it. She would have understood it and no doubt had some excellent criticisms of it. I also dedicate this to Mary Jo Frug and Ardeth Wood, feminist academics I wish I had met and whose work is missed by the world. Also, I dedicate this to the adolescent girl I once was, whose ghostly presence was with me throughout this work. And, of course, finally, and most importantly, I dedicate this dissertation to Ashley Smith. Acknowledgements should also go to the living. One simply does not complete major projects alone. I would be unconscionably remiss if I did not offer thanks to my PhD examiners Rebecca Johnson and Augustine Park, committee members Lara Karaian and Doris Buss and especially to my extraordinary dissertation supervisor Sheryl Hamilton for brilliance, patience and sage guidance. Also, I want to acknowledge my family. It would have been impossible to do any of this writing without the partnership of Matt, my steady, visionary travelling companion and partner in crime, or my parents, Beverley Smith and Gordon Jaremko, who fought – and still fight - for me in all the ways they can, my brilliant motley crew of siblings, and my wild, beautiful children for whom I want change to come and who teach me so much every day. A shout out should go to my colleagues, supporters, and friends. To Deborah Mervitz, who is brave. Also to Kerri Froc, a better “thesis boot camp” collaborator than I could have ever hoped for, Gordana Eldjupovic, a strong mentor, Tamra Thomson who knows the power of legality is in its details, and generally to my lawyer peeps who keep company at the Canadian Bar Association, and who make the practice of law into art. Also to Nick Bala, Mark Weisberg, Maria Sowden, Rev. Andrew Johnston, and fitness trainers Tina, Lisa and Lia, who each with their own modalities of care helped me to sustain the (not insignificant) energy and effort necessary to start, re-start and then finish a PhD while working as a lawyer and mothering four kids. Finally, I think it is important politically and pedagogically to direct an anonymous nod to all the folks who said I wouldn’t finish high school and couldn’t write a PhD dissertation. In addition to those who supported and believed in me, it is also those who did not that I have to thank for revitalizing my rebellious spirit and inciting anger I could alchemize into this work. Thinking of all of those who are not as well-supported, well-resourced and lucky as me, I feel I should mention you. May this work be taken as evidence that many people can do what they have been told they are not capable of doing, and what the statistical odds are ostensibly against them doing, and may it encourage others to speak, read, and write. This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem. - Preface to Leaves of Grass: - Walt Whitman, 1855 Table of Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................. 1 Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... 2 Table of Contents .............................................................................................................. 4 List of Illustrations ............................................................................................................ 7 List of Key Publicly Available Legal Documents Concerning Ashley Smith…………8 List of Acronyms………………………………………………………………………....11 l The Project:…………………………………………………………………………….12 l.1 Telling Stories…………………………………………………………………..….13 l.2 Defining the Project……….………………………………………..…………..…15 1.3 Commonly Accepted Facts of the Smith Case…………..……………………...18 2 The Project in Conversation: Literature Review ................................... ……. …. 25 2.1 The Smith Case and Other Recent Cases .......................................................... 25 2.2 Girls Studies ...................................................................................................... 31 2.3 Governmentality, Security, Risk and the “Criminalized Girl” ........................ 36 2.4 Policy Scholarship ........................................................................................... 48 2.5 Feminist Legal Studies ...................................................................................... 52 3 Theories and Methods: This Case Study .................................................................. 57 3.1.a Defining the Case .............................................................................................. 57 3.1.b Power and Representation in Discourse……………………………………….60 3.1.c Narratives .......................................................................................................... 64 3.1.d Governmentality: Risk, Security and Necropolitics……………………………….66 3.1.e Agency .............................................................................................................. 78 3.1.f Feminist Theory ................................................................................................ 83 3.2 Methods………………………………………………………………………86 3.3 Research Design .............................................................................................. 90 3.4 Notes and Limitations……………………………………………………………….92 4. Inmate Smith: Necropolitical Success ...................................................................... 95 4.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................... 95 4.2 Three Configurations ........................................................................................ 97 4.3 What is Lost .................................................................................................... 139 4.4 The Inquests .................................................................................................... 143 4.5 Inmate Smith and Macro-Power ..................................................................... 148 5. Child Ashley: Recuperation ...................................................................................... 153 5.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................... 153 5.2 Trajectory: Sites, Emergence and Fluorishing………………………………..154 5.3 Ashley the Improper