William Morris’ utopian case for prison abolition
This chapter presents an account of William Morris’ critique of the Victorian prison system as expressed in his political journalism of the 1880s and his utopian romance News from Nowhere (1890). Morris became aware of the injustices of the prison system largely because he saw fellow activists being...
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| Format: | Print Article |
| Language: | English |
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2025
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| In: |
Envisioning abolition
Year: 2025, Pages: 125-145 |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Summary: | This chapter presents an account of William Morris’ critique of the Victorian prison system as expressed in his political journalism of the 1880s and his utopian romance News from Nowhere (1890). Morris became aware of the injustices of the prison system largely because he saw fellow activists being imprisoned as a consequence of their political work. As such, the anti-carceral ethos of Morris’ utopia is contextualized with reference to the fin-de-siècle socialist movement’s skirmishes with the carceral institutions of the Victorian state. His proto-abolitionist stance forms part of a larger critique of private property and the inequities of class society, since his envisaged abolition of the prison system presupposes the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society. Alongside considerations of Morris’ narrative poem The Pilgrims of Hope (1885–1886) and his stage-play Nupkins Awakened (1887), the concluding sections of the chapter place Morris in dialogue with Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (1975) in order to establish the correspondence between their respective critiques of the state’s power to punish. |
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| Item Description: | Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 144-145 |
| ISBN: | 9781529234770 |
