The Ethics of Capital Punishment and a Law of Affective Enchantment

This paper re-reads American Appellate and Supreme Court rulings about the constitutionality of execution by electrocution from perspective new materialism. Using case Provenzano v. Moore, this highlights how existing jurisprudence develops a notion cruelty that deliberately avoids sensual affective dimensions punishment. Given profoundly corporeal nature punishment even more so capital punishment, any consideration ethics punitive practice must meaningfully engage with body, its situatedness, material networks, all which enact as social phenomenon. Employing Jane Bennett's enchantment, grounded in ethico-onto-epistemology materialist thinkers, critiques majority opinion demonstrating it feeds into modern disenchantment. It then draws on Provenzano's landmark dissent to show ethical stems opening oneself up wonderment an entangled world produced through acknowledgement nonhuman selves plastic bodies. has potential generate understanding ‘humane’ better, accounts for human beings relate around them.