As I began to conceive of a proposal for this project, my recent reading of Bernard Stiegler’s Acting Out (specifically his essay How I Became A Philosopher) was at the forefront of my mind. In this text, Stiegler details his academic evolution during a 5-year period of incarceration for armed robbery in Toulouse, France, in which he entered as a high-school dropout and emerged as a student of philosophical powerhouses such as Jacques Derrida, going on to achieve his doctorate under Derrida’s guidance at the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès and eventually becoming the author of 30 published texts. With the uptick of “book bans” occurring in schools across the country, this project’s initial aim was to explore the impact of such hysteria as it inevitably influences the lives of those most ignored in society (i.e. prisoners), as well as to consider the implications of such strictures on flows of information and how they might hinder the restorative transformations that are possible for the incarcerated through education and access. As my project developed, these questions did not necessarily change. However, with the aim of prison book bans revealed to be largely targeting inmate’s desire (in the form of prohibitions on texts with sexually explicit material) rather than their capacity for political or philosophical thought, what was revealed through this application of The Marshall Project’s dataset was not what my initial query had anticipated.
As noted in my proposal, the audience for these visualizations is anyone concerned with or interested in prisoners’ rights, rehabilitative incarceration, or the general advancement of broader access to education, literacy, and reading materials for all, imprisoned or otherwise. However, considering the unbalanced focus of prisons on banning anything regarded as sexually “inappropriate,” the audience of these implications could be extended to those interested in the imposition of morality via the state and the biopolitical regulation of sexual desire. Given that these are materials provided to incarcerated individuals whose offenses are not present in the dataset, this conversation is difficult to have and thus, this project’s purpose is not to argue for and against the ban of sexually explicit books. What these visualizations aim to do is encourage the audience to consider the political, religious, and moral motivations inherent in these bans and the reasons why proscriptions on “explicit nudity” outweigh bans on texts depicting violence by such a sizable margin.
My first visualization provides a simple view of the trajectory of book bans in the United States over the last 20+ years. Notable is the uptick in book bans around periods of political divisiveness and moral panic, such as in the case of Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998, Obama’s re-election in 2012, and the civil delirium that led up to the 2016 election of Donald Trump. As can be seen, since the election of Joe Biden in 2020, book bans in prisons have soared to new heights. This is not to imply direct causal relations but I do find it fascinating that the (presumably) conservation imperative to ban sexually explicit material escalates whenever right-wing power is left to the uncertainty of an election (or, in response to losing one). My second visualization simply works to highlight the foremost reasons why books are being banned in the United States. As one can see, “Sexually Explicit Content” and “Explicit Nudity” have been listed as the cause for 2,300 books being banned, with the vague “Security Risk” following behind. Even as one looks down the list, categories such as “Obscene Material” and “Erotica” are also related to the prison industrial complex’s obsession with outlawing anything deemed to be sexually illicit. My third visualization provides the audience with a list of “most notorious authors,” many of which I was unfamiliar with prior to developing this project. Unsurprisingly, many are authors of what has been labeled online as “erotica” or “urban erotica,” while others such as Stephen King and Neil Gaiman seem entirely arbitrary. While texts from Marxists and radicals such as Cedric Robinson are predictably banned in Florida, the attention paid to political or philosophical texts is almost nonexistent. This is certainly something of a positive, however, it can also be said to be indicative of the lack of interest paid to such literature by incarcerated individuals. My final visualization is a simple map depicting the states from which this dataset is produced. As is evident, Florida, Texas, and Missouri are the principal figures in this movement, with Florida boasting over 20,000 banned texts.
My approach to this project was largely rooted in and directed by what could be done with the limited nature of this dataset. While the scope of the data is extensive (comprised of more than 50,000 titles), the information therein is inconsistent, sloppy, and at times, missing entirely. For example, while states such as Florida list the precise reasons why texts were banned (e.g., violence, sexually explicit), many states simply provide an opaque code (such as A1, F2, etc.) that has no referent to be found online. For states such as Arizona, the reason is simply excluded altogether. This inconsistency within the dataset and the different methodologies of reportage by different states limits the effectual nature and potential of applying this data. With that said, my temporal line graph is meant to communicate the degree to which this prohibition mentality has proliferated in recent years. As noted, these bans have only been trending upward as the American political landscape becomes more divided, ideological, and absurd. The bar graphs used to visualize both the authors targeted by book bans and the reasons employed to justify that bans were chosen simply due to their effective and concise means of communicating that which I found important in producing this narrative. And lastly, the map, incomplete as it is, is a useful tool for conveying counts of the total number of books banned throughout the country.
The future of this project, or any similar project attempting to compile and communicate the extent of book prohibitions occurring in prisons in the United States, would be to complete the dataset, however difficult that this might be. Though these visualizations are highly useful samples of what is occurring throughout the country, a comprehensive understanding of this phenomenon will not be possible until data from each state is gathered. Additionally, my initial aim of interweaving the story of Bernard Stiegler’s redemption arc was a bit short-circuited by the sheer degree to which these bans focus on restricting the prison population’s exposure to anything sexual in nature. My original assumption was that books deemed “dangerous” by the state would be those capable of producing a Bernard Stiegler or an Antonio Gramsci, of spitting out a political or philosophical thinker due to the simple combination of years of isolation + volumes of radical thought. This was not the case and, in some way, it is disheartening. Comic books and pornography are considered more threatening to the state than political manifestos or philosophical polemics and I am not sure what to make of this. Perhaps the future of this project could be a more thorough critical investigation of the underlying motivations behind these bans as well as the educational programs and pathways present in the prison system. Admittedly, my knowledge of this subject matter is limited and I am sure that there are conclusions to be made from this data that are lost on me. However, going forward, I think an expanded scope of data and the addition of broader historical and social context, coupled with a more thorough and conclusive critical analysis grounded in a greater understanding of the prison-industrial complex, would all be necessary components in the production of a more impactful and informative set of visualizations.
