Supermax prisons and the trajectory of exception

Supermax prisons have proliferated in the United States since their contemporary introduction in the early 1980s and have developed a more recent trajectory in the war prison. Drawing on the work of Giorgio Agamben and Zygmunt Bauman as well as ethnographic research in Washington state prisons, this article considers the internal dynamics and history of the supermax prison in terms of bare life, exception, indifference, and “choice.” Contradictory relationships within and around the supermax are contextualized in terms of the extreme and technologically sophisticated methods that make up contemporary incarceration.