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Thinking lot abt how historians/social scientists sometimes describe certain political outcomes as "unintended consequences," using archival evidence found in personal/government-preserved papers as proof of an actor's allegedly virtuous or least not fully nefarious intentions.
But sometimes I wonder about the limitations of this framing.
Is what we are seeing an “unintended consequence” or an unarticulated but very real expression of a political actor’s investment in systems of domination and exploitation that ultimately benefit them materially and reproduce their status + power?
How much should we trust “official” expressions of innocence (or "unknowing"?) and other seemingly well-meaning policy explanations from historical subjects who have every reason to lie, or every reason to leave so many of their assumptions uninterrogated?
Sometimes we get lucky and can prove powerholders are full of shit. E.g., I have documents that indicate prisoners told a prisoner rights group that guards beat them mercilessly after two wardens were killed, even as the prison claimed "there had been no reports of beatings."
But we don't always have this type of direct evidence to puncture the state's narratives in ways that some in our discipline feel is necessary to fully indict those in power.
And sometimes the issue is more abstract, and the violence resulting from a policy more indirect (if still completely evil).
So much of the violence of the carceral state, I'm finding, is found in what policymakers *did not* directly say or consider. It's hidden in the white supremacist + imperialist assumptions & the (I would argue) intentional foreclosing of other visions for responding to harm.
