A ‘system of light before being a figure of stone’: The phantasmagoric prison

Abstract

This article explores the uncanny interplay between folk and official readings of Victorian prison architecture. From building designs to cinematic depictions, the visual underpins any understanding of the prison. Using Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia, it will be shown how the visual elements of prison buildings, both physical and cinematic, obscure a 'programmatic organisation of space'. As such, the prison is akin to a 'phantasmagoria'. Both have visual elements that embrace and encourage an imaginative response, but that also mask a rational core. The term 'Gothic(k)' is developed here to describe those elements of the prison that constitute its 'place-myth'. The prison no longer requires a physical apparatus to project its message or consolidate this place-myth. By drawing upon the Gothic(k) readings of the prison and the analogy of the phantasmagoria, we see how the prison has been fully rendered as a 'system of light'. KeywordsBakhtin, phantasmagoria, prison architecture, prison film, uncannyThere are three images that underpin the coming argument. They are intended to orient the reader, demonstrating how the interstices between them allow for a ghostly, shimmering unity of meaning across all three. Firstly, we might imagine a crowded theatre in late 18th-century Paris. The lights are extinguished and an inky blackness descends over the suddenly hushed audience. Above the stage a pale, cloaked figure slowly materializes. As it comes into focus we see its arms reach out, clawing toward the unsettled crowd. Beneath its hood stare the empty sockets of a leering skull. A second image: a lone figure, a prisoner, kneels in a cell. Head bowed, he faces the bars. From our vantage point behind this stooped figure, we see the expanse of Bentham's panopticon. In the middle ground stands the central observation tower. What appears to be a crucifix surrounded by candles caps the tower. How could such a configuration of bricks and mortar bring this individual to their knees? Finally, we see an aerial shot of Shawshank Penitentiary. As Thomas Newman's score swells we are lifted up and over the administration block, this architectural curiosity that is 'one part cathedral, two parts Castle Frankenstein' (Demyan cited by Kermode, 2003: Crime Media Culture 7(1) 83 -97

Book Review: Caleb Smith, The Prison and the American Imagination, London: Yale University Press, 2009; 272 pp.: 9780300141665, $40.00 (hbk)

“…These passages that detail the narrative patterns established during this period offer some useful literary detail to the analyses that can be found elsewhere (e.g. Smith, 2008;Fiddler, 2011).…”

“…Shields (1991) would more explicitly point to the coalescing of diverse place images, derived from popular cultural litter to produce an overarching placemyth. This has both a referential and anticipatory character that is self-reinforcing (see Fiddler, 2011, elsewhere in this issue). As such, 'the imagination displaced the public square' in carrying the gothic-infused messages of punishment (Smith, 2009: 52).…”

‘Superstition will Add to its Horrors’: The Early American Penitentiary and its Gothic Shadow

“…1 Brevity precludes an extended discussion of a fundamental architectural conceit of the period: Bentham's Panopticon. However, I address its place within the penal imagination elsewhere (Fiddler 2011). 2 The interested reader is directed towards Whyte's (2009, p.319) article that draws principally upon Agamben, but also looks to Deleuze and Benjamin, in analysing Bartleby and his 'experiment in potentiality itself '.…”

“…In particular, there was an intriguing cross‐fertilisation of imagery and thinking between both the prison and the nascent form of the novel. By unpacking this relationship between punishment and its representation we can begin to see the strength of the enduring idea of a culturally Gothic prison (Fiddler ). We see competing discourses acting on, and through, the penitentiary subject: that individual contained within the chthonic space of the cell.…”

“…Brevity precludes an extended discussion of a fundamental architectural conceit of the period: Bentham's Panopticon. However, I address its place within the penal imagination elsewhere (Fiddler ).…”