Juvenile States: a Genealogy of Race, Gender and Delinquency in U.S
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Juvenile States: A Genealogy of Race, Gender and Delinquency in U.S. Culture, 1899-1967 Heyang Julie Kae A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of: Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2014 Reading Committee: Chandan Reddy (Chair) Eva Cherniavsky Gillian Harkins Habiba Ibrahim Program Authorized to offer degree: English ©Copyright 2014 Heyang Julie Kae University of Washington Abstract Juvenile States: A Genealogy of Race, Gender and Delinquency in U.S. Culture, 1899-1967 Heyang Julie Kae Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Chandan Reddy English This dissertation surveys the status of the juvenile delinquent in U.S. cultural production through a cross disciplinary investigation of sociology, psychology, literature and film. The cultural archive of this dissertation is organized around two important legal watersheds in juvenile justice. In 1899, the first juvenile court was established in Cook County, Illinois, and ushered a wave of juvenile justice reform in courts across the nation. The culmination of early Progressive era child savers’ efforts, the installation of juvenile courts marked a significant shift in the court’s formal role from neutral adjudicator to a paternal administrator. The Supreme Court decision, In re Gault (1967) marks the second watershed. Within normative legal accounts, this decision is seen as “restoring” the court’s impartial treatment of the juvenile based on the determination that juvenile court procedure failed to protect the juvenile’s right to due process. Across these legal watersheds, this dissertation offers a genealogy of juvenile delinquency discourse that interrogates the complex network of disciplinary knowledge (including law, psychology and sociology), which simultaneously clarified and obfuscated the causal features of youth’s supposed predisposition towards criminal behavior. I use a genealogical method, as theorized by Michel Foucault, to expose the limits, obfuscations, and contradictions of dominant narratives of juvenile delinquency in order to denaturalize the authority of disciplinary knowledge by examining juvenile delinquency discourse as an assembly of historical entanglements and political contestations that were critically imagined in aesthetic representations of juvenile delinquency. To this end, the chapters offer sustained readings of literary and cinematic representations of the juvenile delinquent to decenter the pathological determinacies of delinquent behavior deployed by the state and social sciences and to animate the juvenile delinquent as a constitutively porous figure that has reinforced a state technology of selective incorporation. Table of Contents Acknowledgments............................................................................................................................ i Introduction ......................................................................................................................................1 Chapter One Incorporating Innocence: Delinquent Adventures in Servitude and Freedom ...................25 Chapter Two From Street Girls to Cowgirls: Progressive Era Juvenile Delinquency and Gender Regulation ............................................................................................................66 Chapter Three “Opening a Third Front”: Mapping Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Black Life in the 1940s ........................................................................................117 Chapter Four “It's just our bringin' up-ke”: Cold War Juvenile Delinquency and the Politics of Selective Incorporation ............................................................................151 Coda Technologies of abandonment: Neoliberal Citizenship, Juvenile Delinquency and Cambodian American Refugee Youth in a.k.a. Don Bonus ...........................................193 Works Cited .................................................................................................................................215 Acknowledgements I am incredibly fortunate to have such intellectual luminaries on my dissertation committee. The completion of this dissertation would not have been possible without the mentorship of Chandan Reddy, who has remained an inspirational beacon in this academic endeavor. I will always remember the overwhelming intimidation I felt as a first year student in his Asian American studies seminar. His brilliant intensity and warm levity stoked my desire to continue. Always encouraging, he pushed me to make my project better and I thank him for that. This dissertation found its bearings under the judicious guidance of Eva Cherniavsky. Without her incisive comments and discerning perspective, this project would not have been successful. I have been consistently humbled by the astute insights of Gillian Harkins, who has been a vital interlocutor throughout my graduate studies and the model of professionalism in my development as a scholar and instructor. I would like to especially thank Habiba Ibrahim for serving on my committee and patiently waiting for the completion of this project. Rick Bonus has been an exemplar of the kind of teacher I hope to be. My interest in literary studies began as an undergraduate at Amherst College: Andy Parker sparked my interest in literary theory and set a high standard for my thinking; Dale Peterson gave much needed writerly advice and an encouraging word; and Karen Sanchez-Eppler taught me how to connect my literary interests to a critical investment in pedagogy. Life as a graduate student can be (necessarily) lonely but I have been fortunate to have a strong circle of vibrant friends whom I call my Seattle family. Though some friends have gone, Kat Wong, Wynne Greenwood, Bridge Joyce, Andre Taybron, and Mitchell Baier, have remained i my bedrocks. I also thank Manoucheka Celeste, Geraldine Lee, Theryn Kigvamasudvashti, Marites Mendoza, Matthew Nicdao, Nan Ma, Joseph Traina, Will Arighi, Elloise Kim, Symbol Lai, Su-Ching Wang, Georgia Roberts and Amy Hyunah Pak, who have each enriched my life with their vibrant world views and friendship at key moments throughout. Productive writing sessions with Ligaya Domingo, Marites Mendoza, and Will Arighi helped propel this dissertation, often saving it from periods of stagnancy. Young Mi Choe, Sofya Aptekar and Wilson Mui have brought me relief when I needed a reminder of where I come from. Judith Kaftan brought me back to my best self when I strayed. Finally, Tim Menza, who I have known since kindergarten, is the “bestest” of friends one could have. His humor and commitment to the service of others is a continual inspiration. June Lanoue and Chunwoo Kae have always had faith that I would get this done and have made our bi-coastal family strong and affectionate. My parents, Choonja and Young Ho Kae have been dutifully doling out advice since the beginning of this project. They never lost patience and remain my most enthusiastic cheerleaders. The support of Carolyn Sands has been invaluable. Travis and Phoenix Sands have made my life so incredibly rich and gloriously complex. Phoenix has made our home a space of teenage humor and continues to impress upon me the importance of letting go. Travis has buoyed me through many tribulations and has made our partnership a critical practice of loving kindness and respect. This dissertation could not have been completed with the amazing support he provided by caring for our daughter Anya, who arrived in the final years of this project. Though some may question the timeliness of her arrival, I couldn’t imagine it any other way. Finally, I dedicate this dissertation to my mother who, as a survivor of the Korean War, a committed nurse to countless patients in recovery, a fierce advocate for her ii family, and an avid reader eager for my book recommendations, has never failed to express her confidence in my endeavors. Thank you べ⑽, for your infinite love and compassion. iii Introduction “Delinquency, controlled illegality, is an agent for the illegality of the dominant groups.” –Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish “There is something curious about this--curious and unaccountable. There must be two Americas: one that sets the captive free, and one that takes a once-captive's new freedom away from him, and picks a quarrel with him with nothing to found it on; then kills him to get his land." –Mark Twain, “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” Two young white boys stand barefoot, dressed in tattered clothes. The boy on the left leans to his right with his left foot casually turned out. Both hands comfortably rest at his sides through torn cuffless sleeves. His affectless yet piercing gaze is directed towards a person or object to the observer’s left. His meeker counterpart stands to the right, his shoulders slightly tense. The shorter boy tucks his right thumb under a tangled suspender strap. His eyes are alert and his lips slightly parted. This seemingly unremarkable photograph appears in Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives (1890), a photojournalistic account of life in New York City slums. 1 The photograph’s caption “Didn’t Live Nowhere” loosely ties to an anecdote Riis provides earlier: “a drunken father explains the matter [of orphans] in other cases, as in that of John and Willie, aged ten and eight, picked up by the police. They ‘didn’t live nowhere,’ never went to school, could neither read nor write.” 2 By 1890, these boys would easily qualify as delinquents under the 1825 Act to 1 Jacob A. Riis and Luc Sante, How the Other