432 research outputs found
Pixelated flesh
The pixel and the technique of pixelating faces belong to a politics of fear and a digital aesthetics of truth which shapes public perceptions of criminality and the threat of otherness. This article will draw on Paul Virilio's account of the pixel in Lost Dimension in order to analyze its specific role and operation in relation to contemporary representations of incarceration. In particular, the article will consider the figure of the incarcerated informant. The incarcerated criminal or informant plays a complex role as both subversive other and purveyor of truth and as such constitutes an important example of the ways in which pixelation functions as a visible signifier of a dangerous truth whilst blurring, erasing and, ultimately, dehumanizing those "speaking" this truth. Our discussion forms part of a larger analysis of the production, framing and circulation of images of otherness, identifying Virilio as key to debates around the violence of the screen
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In search of temporal loopholes: insuring against a future that will never come
This series of reflections on the contemporary experience and consciousness of time calls for a radical rethinking to confront the present and future threat of climate-led disaster. Focusing on the pocketwatch and smartwatch, the article will consider Paul Virilio's critique of contemporary forms of alienation and the ever-increasing disjuncture between human experience and the instruments that measure and analyse time in the service of the global, financial market. Jean-Pierre Dupuy's 'enlightened catastrophism' is proposed as opening up possibilities for a politics of time which can reposition the present in the service of a future threatened by the vicissitudes of late capitalism. The paper goes on to argue that Dupuy needs to be reread alongside Virilio, taking into account the latter's notion of 'time pollution' and critique of forecasting. The conceptual framings proposed are elucidated with reference to a cinematic tradition that takes the multiple temporalities shaping human existence as its object
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Reimagining the ruins of the penalscape: Patrick Chamoiseauâs carceral ruinology
This article explores Martinican author and educator, Patrick Chamoiseauâs evocation of the carceral ruin across his writing and, in particular, his novels. The notion of a âcarceral ruinologyâ at play in Chamoiseauâs oeuvre is explored in the specific context of a âpenalscapeâ marked not only by todayâs prisons, camps and detention centres but equally and increasingly by the remnants of historical forms of imprisonment and internment. The article suggests that Chamoiseauâs most sustained engagement with the ruins of the prison, his essay on Franceâs former penal colony in French Guiana, Guyane: Traces-mĂ©moires du bagne, published alongside photographs by Rodolphe Hammadi, provides a conceptual tool for thinking about the political stakes of these ruins. Such an approach also circumvents existing critiques of the photo-essay and its recent republication as an appendix to new images by Jean-Luc de Laguarigue. The article will argue that Chamoiseauâs writing of the carceral ruin is both a writing against history and a writing against the prison. It will chart the movement from a reluctance to describe the slave dungeon in Texaco, to the use of the same space as a means of telling a different story in Un Dimanche au cachot before finally considering the shift that occurs in Lâempreinte Ă CrusoĂ© where the island in its totality is reimagined as prison. Where the presence of ruins allows different stories to be told, the prison that disappears without a trace enables the return of the carceral as much as the colonial via the myth of virgin territory
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Narratives of food insecurity in the penal colony: interpreting memories of âslow violenceâ in French Guiana and New Caledonia
After decades of collective forgetting, heritage initiatives have resulted in the restoration of sites linked to Franceâs former penal colonies in French Guiana and New Caledonia which operated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In both territories, museums dedicated to the history of the âbagneâ have been created in buildings once used as kitchens and bakeries. However, as with other forms of penal heritage, the opportunity to create more nuanced and sustained narratives around the lived experience of food insecurity for those sent to the penal colonies remains subordinated to more sensationalist accounts of physical constraint and corporal punishment. This article analyses existing narratives and museography at the two sets of sites, identifying potential for further memory and interpretive work around food, nutrition, and sustainability. The article explores convict memoirs and correspondence that emphasise the âslow violenceâ of malnutrition resulting from poor-quality produce and unequal distributions of rations amongst convict populations. The wider intention is to consider how historical narratives of food insecurity can be developed at sites of former penal heritage to foster awareness and empathy around contemporary forms of food poverty, emphasising that food insecurity is still used as a form of control within spaces of confinement
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From Green Hell to grey heritage: ecologies of colour in the penal colony
âGreen Hellâ was the nickname frequently given to Franceâs largest overseas penal colony in French Guiana. This essay explores the slow and difficult recognition of penal heritage in France and its former colonies via the notion of âgreyâ heritage adopted by Philippe ArtiĂšres to identify heritage associated with imprisonment and detention. Drawing on the cross-disciplinary field of colour studies, we explore a series of different possible readings of âgreyâ in order to highlight different ways in which sites can be instrumentalised to both affirm and negate carceral continuities across history and transnationally. Focusing on locations in French Guiana and the Con Dao archipelago in Vietnam, the essay explores the materiality of these spaces, their presentation and their visitors, in order to suggest how âgrey heritageâ might be developed as a critical and reflexive approach to the carceral past
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The spectacle of discipline and punish: the tableau, the diagram and the calligram
This article returns to Michel Foucaultâs Discipline and Punish in order to consider its continued relevance for thinking about the representation of incarceration today beyond categories of âspectacleâ and âsurveillanceâ. In order to rethink the text in relation to contemporary scholarship on visual criminology, it will explore the visual elements of Discipline and Punish in more detail via the concepts of the âtableauâ and the âdiagramâ found in Gilles Deleuzeâs Foucault. These concepts will be supplemented by the notion of the âcalligramâ, drawing on Foucaultâs 1968 essay âCeci nâest pas une pipeâ in order to explore what is at stake in current representations of incarceration via a specific engagement with offender art. Evoking Jacques RanciĂšreâs notion of curiosity as a critique of the âintolerable imageâ, the article will suggest ways in which the relationship between the academic scholar qua âpenal spectatorâ and the ârepresentedâ incarcerated subject can be reconfigured to produce a more critical, empathetic and socially responsible engagement with such representations
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