Punishment, border crossings and the powers of horror

Abstract

Gothicism, typified by gruesome injury and trauma, and menacing shadowy figures, is a prominent feature of the discourses of public protection and vengeful punishment. Historically the gothic has dramatized a modern preoccupation with boundaries and their collapse. Today an increasingly complex series of networks and flows cross, undermine and remake the borders and boundaries of old. Important contemporary reconfigurations include the erosion of traditional distinctions between public and private spheres, between information and entertainment and between legal and extra-legal. Understanding this profusion of different kinds of border crossings requires the scholar to depart from the Eliasian equation of interdependencies with a ‘civilizing process’ associated with restraint, sympathy and tolerance. To understand the complexity of border crossings, experimentation is required with concepts that directly theorize the breaching of established spatial entities and categories, and that focus attention on the potent effects of flows, new connections and the in-between. One such concept is the notion of abjection, through which the powers of horror invoked by popular cultural representations, case law and penal practices are related to the horror of that which breaches borders. This article contributes an exploration of the visceral passions of contemporary penality in terms of Julia Kristeva’s assertion that, ‘according to the logic of separation, it is flow that is impure’.

Punishment as a Hate Crime

“…The European Court, while not identifying this act as a breach of human rights, did comment that it was somewhat unadvisable. When the boys, Thompson and Venables, were eventually released in 2000, the threat of attack was deemed so serious that they had to be supplied with new identities backed up by an anonymity order (see Valier, 2002). They were described in the Times as 'marked men' and 'dead men walking.'…”

In the Shadow of the Monster: Gothic Narratives of Violence Prevention

“…Sensationalist crimes are no longer considered anomalies, but permanent insidious features with repetitive themes of haunting and dereliction, from which, in true Gothic spirit, there is no rescue or escape (Valier 2002: 323). The populism of today does not simply come from mass-mediated stories, but instead reflects cultural anxieties and a longing for categorical certainties in the vertiginous conditions of late modernity (Sothcott 2016;Valier 2002;Young 2007). The Gothic imagination is, therefore, not only a projection of anxiety striving to reinforce cultural boundaries, but is also used to actively disrupt these boundaries, "exposing their cultural fragility" (Sothcott 2016: 436).…”

“…The Gothic imagination is, therefore, not only a projection of anxiety striving to reinforce cultural boundaries, but is also used to actively disrupt these boundaries, "exposing their cultural fragility" (Sothcott 2016: 436). The more porous the boundaries between public and private, information and entertainment, legal and extralegal become, the more influence Gothic narratives will have on criminal justice policies (Valier 2002). As such, Gothicity not only molds our perception of offenders and offending, but also permeates punishment and the criminal justice processes.…”

Conflating the Muslim refugee and the terror suspect: responses to the Syrian refugee “crisis” in Brexit Britain

“…Converging terrors of terrorism and loss of national identity occupying western societies post-9/11, and which have regained momentum following recent terror attacks within European cities, can be understood through the Gothic's preoccupation with borders and their collapse. The Gothic nature of contemporary social risks (forthcoming; also Valier 2002, Abbas 2013) arises from a fundamental concern with security both "national security and personal ontological security" (McGhee 2005, 76). What has surfaced in the post-9/11 context is a Gothic populism that draws into relation a pronounced "asylophobia" (McGhee 2005, 76) with the threat of terrorism (Weber and Bowling 2004, 198).…”