QUESTIONS TO GUIDE VIEWEING - ANSWERS 1. • • • According to Matthew Gibney, what are the three forms of banishment that can be found throughout history? Explain what each form of banishment entails. Self-exile: voluntary fleeing to escape punishment. Relegatio: expulsion from a community as a form of punishment. Deportatio: being send away to a specific place (e.g., an island or outcast) as a form of punishment for serious crimes. 2. • • • Banishment removes the offender from public view: this allows for communal forgetting and decreases the likelihood of a spiral of revenge and retaliation that would upset the civil peace. Banishment incapacitates the offender: by placing them outside of the boundaries of the community, banishment protects other community members from those who would harm them. Banishment purifies the community: by purging society of failed members, banishment demonstrates the worth of membership and affirms the symbolic boundaries of community. 3. • • • • • • Matthew Gibney also explained that there are four additional reasons why banishment was continuously being used. Can you name two of these reasons, and explain why they contributed to this? Banishment offered flexibility for authorities: the punishment could be used for various different crimes, to various degrees (temporary/permanent). Banishment could be beneficial for the social status of the convict: because the punishment was solely reserved for citizens. Banishment enabled moderation between punishments: between corporeal and death punishments, for crimes that were difficult to determine. Banishment could facilitate state projects: rather than being put to death or being incarcerated, convicts could be put to use for state purposes (especially during the colonial time). 4. • Matthew Gibney argued that there are three main societal roles that banishment fulfilled. What are these three roles and why did they allow for the continued use of banishment throughout history? According to Matthew Gibney, there are three influential thinkers who have criticized the usage of banishment as a punishment. Who are these three influential people, what were their main critiques and what important changes in society do they represent? Voltaire: critiqued the irrationality of banishment, saying that it merely recycling criminals between nations, instead of solving the issues. His critique represents the rise of the bureaucratic state, due to which banishment between cities disappeared, but was still done overseas (to colonies). Benjamin Franklin: critiqued the ‘dumping’ of criminals in other countries; he called to rise up against Britain’s dumping of transported convicts by sending rattlesnakes back to England. His critique represents the rise of nationalism, due to which membership became more clearly defined and more strictly surveyed, reinforcing distinctions between outsiders and insiders. Bentham: critiqued the transportation of convicts and argued that punishment should be equal and focussed on reformation; justice should not be made a lottery. His critique represents a change in views regarding the purpose of punishments. 5. According to Matthew Gibney, denationalisation and expulsion, while still inherently connected, have become two separate practices with distinct goals. What is the difference between these two processes and how have these differences come to be? Today, there is a distinction between communal disownment (denationalisation) and expulsion (banishment). Denationalisation strips a citizen of their nationality, making that person someone else’s responsibility. Expulsion is something that is often a consequence of denationalisation but is legally a separate process. Expulsion is reserved for people with a dual-nationality and is meant to get a person out of the country. The distinction was made in order to justify expulsion (banishment) not as a punishment, but rather as a legal and administrative process. It is limited to citizens with dual-nationality, as the modern state system does not allow states to “get rid” of their own citizens.