Skin Theory - by Cristina Mejia Visperas (Paperback)

About the Book

"During the postwar period, experiments on prison populations were standard practice among many universities, public health agencies, and major pharmaceutical manufacturers across the United States. Thus, the operative question in Skin Theory is: What was it about the US prison that made it so amenable to medical science research? A visual study for critically understanding entwined sites of imprisonment and scientific knowledge production, Skin Theory speaks directly to the crucial moments immediately before two large American industries, one carceral and the other pharmaceutical, saw their fantastic rise and dominance, honing in on when their interests and operations came together in explicit ways. It revisits the notorious dermatological experiments conducted between 1952 and 1974 at Holmesburg Prison, Philadelphia, analyzing skin in its technological, spatial, and discursive dimensions to illustrate a profound antagonism between knowledge and freedom made visible through the body of the captive test subject, a racialized subject whose boundless availability to scientific and cultural representation complicates the very notion of skin. This study offers an important reframing of critical approaches to race in histories of science, medicine, and technology, redefining science as already a fundamentally racial project. A visual analysis of how medical science and incarceration together formed a race-making technology and geography reconfiguring the nation's long history of captivity, from slavery to mass incarceration, Skin Theory shifts from issues of scientific racism to the scientific rationality of racism itself"--

Book Synopsis

Honorable Mention, Rachel Carson Prize, given by the Society for the Social Studies of Science

Finalist, 2023 ASAP Book Award, given by the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present

Studies the intersections of incarceration, medical science, and race in postwar America

In February 1966, a local newspaper described the medical science program at Holmesburg Prison, Philadelphia, a "golden opportunity to conduct widespread medical tests under perfect control conditions." Helmed by Albert M. Kligman, a University of Pennsylvania professor, these tests enrolled hundreds of the prison's predominantly Black population in studies determining the efficacy and safety of a wide variety of substances, from common household products to chemical warfare agents. These experiments at Holmesburg were hardly unique; in the postwar United States, the use of incarcerated test subjects was standard practice among many research institutions and pharmaceutical companies. Skin Theory examines the prison as this space for scientific knowledge production, showing how the "perfect control conditions" of the prison dovetailed into the visual regimes of laboratory work. To that end, Skin Theory offers an important reframing of visual approaches to race in histories of science, medicine, and technology, shifting from issues of scientific racism to the scientific rationality of racism itself.

In this highly original work, Cristina Mejia Visperas approaches science as a fundamentally racial project by analyzing the privileged object and instrument of Kligman's experiments: the skin. She theorizes the skin as visual technology, as built environment, and as official discourse, developing a compelling framework for understanding the intersections of race, incarceration, and medical science in postwar America.

Review Quotes

"Cristina Visperas speaks theory to history, overturning decades of documentation that sensationalizes Philadelphia's infamous Holmesburg Prison and the medical experiments conducted there on the backs of Black subjects. Critical visual carceral studies is brought powerfully to bear on the science studies critique of biomedicine, institutions of state power, and technologies of race, showing us how the crumbling edifice of the prison system is structurally linked to the assault on Black skin inside its walls."-- "Lisa Cartwright, University of California, San Diego"

"Skin Theory is a provocative and thoroughly researched work that is essential reading for anyone invested in science and technology studies, critical investigations of race, and the prison abolition movement. Visperas deftly navigates the nuances of theory against infamously racist historical events to produce a book that is at once necessary and timely."-- "Jeffrey Allen Bennet, Vanderbilt University"

"Mejia Visperas (Univ. of Southern California) outlines a broader critical reenvisioning of these events, treating them as paradigmatic of the scientific racism inherent in the overall entanglement between research and captivity ... potentially of great value for an intersection of critical science and technology studies (STS) and race theory."-- "Choice"

About the Author

Cristina Mejia Visperas is Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Southern California.