eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780520961500 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of California Press |
| Publication date: | 04/30/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 304 |
| Sales rank: | 965,767 |
| File size: | 8 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Escape to Prison
Penal Tourism and the Pull of Punishment
By Michael Welch
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Copyright © 2015 The Regents of the University of CaliforniaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-520-96150-0
CHAPTER 1
Penal Tourism
The resurrection of former prisons as museums has caught the attention of tourists along with scholars interested in studying that particular pastime (Ross, 2012; Strange and Kempa, 2003; Welch, 2012a, 2013; Welch and Macuare, 2011; Wilson, 2008a). Unsurprisingly, due to their grim subject matter, prison museums tend to invert the "Disney" experience, becoming the antithesis of "the happiest place on earth" (Williams, 2007: 99). With that realization, it is fitting to situate penal tourism within a larger phenomenon known as dark tourism, in which people gravitate to sites associated with war, genocide, and other tragic events for purposes of remembrance, education, or even entertainment (Lennon and Foley, 2010; Rojek, 1993; Stone and Sharpley, 2008). In the realm of punishment, dark tourism has been examined from the standpoint of penal spectatorship involving bystanders who gaze at the spectacle of pain and suffering. Michelle Brown, in her insightful book The Culture of Punishment: Prison, Society, and Spectacle, explains that museum goers are subjected to various techniques of positioning intended to establish certain perspectives and perceptions (see Welch, 2010a). For instance, by keeping penal spectators at a safe social distance from the realities of torture and other forms of brutality, interest in dark tourism is carefully regulated (Walby and Piche, 2011; see Piche and Walby, 2010; Huey, 2011).
Consider a visit to the Clink prison museum in London, a cramped, dingy, and dimly lit cellar that from 1144 until 1780 served as a dungeon for debtors as well as religious and political dissenters (see figure 1). The brochure advertising the Clink promotes the museum as offering "gruesome stories of prisoners" and a "hands-on torture chamber," thereby inviting visitors to become participants. Toward that end, a series of subterranean galleries are devoted to the virtual infliction of pain whereby penal spectators have safe contact with the various tools of the torture trade, including the stocks, pillories, cat-o'-nine-tails, and the rack. Storyboards inform tourists about the rationale of certain devices. A sign explaining "The Manacles" reads: "One of the simplest forms of 'enhanced interrogation' was to leave a person alone, hanging in manacles for hours and hours, or days; lack of food and water, accompanied by the increasing strain on the arms, and the total solitude might well be enough to induce compliance." Curators are quick to point out that the manacles were used to evade the rule of law: "Since this treatment left no grievous marks, it was not legally classed as torture and could therefore be employed without a royal warrant; the only great risk was that the victim might go mad before confessing" (see Welch, 2009a, 2009b, 2011a).
The Clink's "hands-on torture chamber" also contains a key interactive component that invites tourists to "take the role of the other." For example, visitors can literally put themselves in the shoes of prisoners by trying on "The Boot." A placard located above a replica of "The Spanish Boot (or the Scottish Boot)" explains:
The Boot was an awful device used to crush the foot, the victim's foot would be placed in the boot, wood would then be packed in around the foot. The boot would be filled with either oil or water resulting in the swelling of the wood and crushing of the foot. The Boot would then have a fire built underneath it bringing the contents to a boil resulting in the victim's foot falling off.
Things to do:
1) Try putting the boot on your foot. (We do advise the removal of your shoes)
That technique of interactive pedagogy is used frequently in the Clink's "hands-on torture chamber." Consider "The Collar" that "would be placed around the individuals neck, the collar is lead lined and contains a number of spikes." While inflicting excruciating pain, the spiked contraption would infect the victim with lead poisoning, resulting in death. Visitors are encouraged to think about such suffering:
Things to do:
1) Feel the weight of the collar and imagine what it would have been like locked tight around your neck.
2) Imagine how the victim would be able to swallow with such a tight item around their neck.
At the Clink, there is no shortage of "hands-on" experiences with torture instruments, which thereby reinforces a visceral effect. Similar "things to do" are extended to the ball and chain, thumbscrews, the chastity belt, and the chopping block ("put your head on the block and have your photo taken"). Fittingly, the tour concludes with the "Torture Chair," described as a device to gain confessions from prisoners. Once the body was fully strapped, the back of the chair would be raised and tilted forward, forcing the victim to "sit on the edge of their seat." From that position, the torturer could easily apply a number of tools, including the tongue pullers. The poster suggests "things to do":
1) Think what they might do to you once you're strapped in the chair.
2) Guess what tools they might use on you.
While seated in the torture chair, penal spectators complete their visit with a mildly amusing moment: that is, having a personal picture taken with the museum's camera. The instructions read: "After your photo has been taken a receipt will print from the box on the wall to your left ... Simply log on to your photo via the website where you will be able to download a copy to your computer to keep. You will also have the opportunity to order a variety of special gifts." Therefore, a trip to the Clink does not remain in the past; through state-of-the-art technology—not to mention merchandising—tourists can keep a living memory that forever connects them with the sited-ness of the former prison: "I was there."
Though themes of cruelty are prevalent in penal tourism, not all prison museums risk becoming a "morbid theme park" (see Williams, 2007: 102). Certainly, there is always much more to the visit. In their critique, Lennon and Foley (2010) propose that dark tourism posits questions and doubts about modernity and its consequences. Likewise, the case studies contained in this book decipher the complex narratives told through prison museums, including claims to progress, rationality, technology, and science. Moreover, critical analysis reflects on the manner by which prison museums—as storytelling institutions in Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Hong Kong, Johannesburg, London, Melbourne, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seoul, and Sydney—issue a historical tale about their host city with respect to punishment and social control. Of course, the persuasiveness of those stories depends largely on techniques of positioning and distancing as well as on the overall force of the museum effect. Setting the tone for our exploration, we turn to a brief overview of museum studies, particularly as that scholarly field informs penal tourism within a wider cultural sociology of punishment.
THE DYNAMICS OF PRISON MUSEUMS
A museum, according to Paul Williams, is "an institution devoted to the acquisition, conservation, study, exhibition, and educational interpretation of objects with scientific, historical, or artistic value" (2007: 8). Rather than remaining static repositories, museums are appreciated for being dynamic, a quality that has attracted an interdisciplinary field of scholars devoted to museum studies (Bennett, 1995; Crimp, 1993; Prior, 2002). Among the many areas of interest belonging to museum studies is the overarching impact that museums have on their visitors, culture, and society. That museum effect is produced by a complex interplay between objects, images, and space (Casey, 2003; Malraux, 1967). Such interaction entails a good deal of positioning whereby visitors are situated within the museum for the purpose of receiving a certain pedagogical lesson on the institution's collection. Unlike when students are seated in a lecture hall, museums relay their messages through locomotion. Recognizing that visitors' experiences are realized through their physical movement, museums (as well as fairs and exhibitions) aspire to "regulate the performative aspects of their visitors' conduct. Overcoming mind/body dualities in treating their visitors as, essentially, 'minds on legs,' each, in its different way, is a place for 'organized walking' in which an intended message is communicated in the form of a (more or less) directed itinerary" (Bennett, 1995: 6).
A museum's use of "organized walking" circulates visitors around specific objects and images contained within a larger cultural space. Let us briefly touch on these features of the museum so as to understand better penal tourism and the museum effect. Museums facilitate their narratives by putting on display objects intended to catch the attention of visitors. Williams writes: "The force of 'the museum effect' ... is the enlargement of consequence that comes from being reported, rescued, cleaned, numbered, researched, arranged, lit, and written about ... [It] enables objects from the past to be valued in entirely new ways" (2007: 28). As objects become part of the collection, they undergo a cultural transformation, passing from use-value (in their initial incarnation) to signifying-value (in their current incarnation). Curators tend to select objects based on one of three criteria. First, the object boasts signifying-value by being rare or revelatory. At the Argentine Penitentiary Museum in Buenos Aires, for instance, tourists have the opportunity to gaze at prisoner-made drug paraphernalia (i.e., a bong) that represents not only a deviant social world but also a means of psycho-physiological escape from the pains of imprisonment. Second, an object may be selected for being typical and representative of a category. The lashing triangle exhibited at the Sydney Barracks is virtually indistinguishable from the ones in the museums in London, Melbourne, Hong Kong, and Johannesburg. Finally, a curator might choose an object due to its remnant-themed iconography: that is, for having belonged to a remarkable person or group. Penal spectators at the Melbourne Gaol can deepen their appreciation of Ned Kelly's legend by beholding his famous sash as well as his pistol, which was nicked by a constable's bullet during the notorious shoot-out.
Regardless of the criteria for selection, objects on display can be interpreted as semiophores—items prized for their capacity to produce meaning rather than for their usefulness (Pomian, 1990). With respect to dark tourism, some objects have a sinister appeal and are "insidiously arresting, particularly because we assume that they were actually used in terrible acts" (Williams, 2007: 31). Consider, for example, the Clink's display of the "Scavenger's Daughter"—an iron contraption that compressed the victim into a distorted posture so painful that it caused bleeding from the nose and ears. The device is accompanied by a storyboard with a disturbing illustration of person caught in its grip. Indeed, that picture speaks to another dimension of the museum effect, namely, the power of images.
Whereas images belong to the larger category of objects, at times they are regarded as interpretive illustrations that allow visitors to connect with the past (see Alpers, 1991; Carrabine, 2012; Lawrence, 2012). Photographs, as modern images, are especially significant in museums due to their power to captivate as well as their authority to verify history: "Hence, the museum is crucial not only in its ability to provide photographs with the expert technical verification that establishes their truth-value, but also with the cultural verification, wherein the institution's decision to collect and display the image establishes its cultural worth" (Williams, 2007: 53). At the prison museum in Buenos Aires, a photograph of Severino Di Giovanni entices curiosity. The infamous (debonair) anarchist is introduced to visitors in three photographs: a headshot, a group shot, and one with him standing next to the chair where moments later he was executed by a firing squad in 1931.
Museum studies have been faulted for neglecting the importance of space and spacial effect, in part because the field has descended from art history, which concentrates more on the meaning of artifacts than on the larger institutional significance (Bennett, 1995; Prior, 2002). Museums housed in former prisons, however, tend to avoid that drawback because of their unique architecture, enhancing a sense of both internal and external space. The Melbourne Gaol, modeled after Eastern State Penitentiary (Philadelphia) and Pentonville (London), stands conspicuously in the city's central district. Order is expressed through its sheer size, scale, and symmetrical design. Upon entering the institution, visitors find themselves positioned in a long corridor with rows of cells stacked on three levels. Without hesitation, visitors look directly up to the lantern ceiling that filters shafts of light into an otherwise gloomy interior.
One scholar keenly observes: "Architecture matters because it lasts, of course. It matters because it is big, and it shapes the landscape of our everyday lives. But beyond that, it also matters because, more than any other cultural form, it is a means of setting the historical record straight" (Sudjic, 2006: 23). Setting the record straight is an important dimension of penal tourism because visitors are positioned in ways that convince them of the overall authenticity of the institution. Usually, that is not a difficult task, since by being housed in a former penal institution, prison museums are rightfully judged to be authentic. Moreover, because some prison museums were sites of execution (of famous people), they are often regarded as hallowed ground. Accordingly, the historical accuracy is rarely disputed: "this building was used for this purpose; these people were killed here" (Williams, 2007: 80). Touring the Melbourne Gaol, visitors are presented with the tale of Ned Kelly: in that context, the story seems rather hagiographic. The Gaol's advertising logo appearing on the brochure and the sign at the footpath features a drawing of Kelly's iconic helmet worn to shield him from police bullets during the famous standoff. After his capture, Kelly was transported to the Melbourne Gaol, where he was hanged on November 11, 1880 (see Welch, 2011c, 2012b).
In sum, the museum effect relies on the mutually reinforcing relationship between objects, images, and space—all of which are linked to a particular site. To be sure, a defining characteristic of prison museums is their sited-ness. Such venues become a major draw for tourists because the prison and its pedagogy are viewed as authentic.
GOVERNING THROUGH MUSEUMS
In his decidedly Foucaultian approach in The Birth of the Museum, Tony Bennett locates parallels between the genealogy of the museum and that of the prison. Early on, both institutions were typically located at the center of the city, where they stood as embodiments of power to "show and tell." By doing so, they aspired to incorporate people in the processes of the state (see Simon, 2007): "If the museum and the penitentiary thus represented the Janus face of power, there was none the less—at least symbolically—an economy of effort between them" (Bennett, 1995: 87). Bennett mentions the prominent English social reformer James Silk Buckingham, who in 1849 issued a report ambitiously titled National Evils and Practical Remedies, with the Plan for a Model Town. His project was aimed at extolling the virtues of civilized man to establish a "higher state of existence" for Victorian society (224). The model town would be clean and neatly organized around such architectural beauty as statues, colonnades, and fountains. Ideally, churches, libraries, and art galleries would eclipse rowdy pubs, brothels, and the vices they incite. As Bennett points out, that Victorian program demonstrates an interest in conceptualizing the tasks of government. With the head of a family as its paradigm, government would assume gentle responsibility over its citizenry so as to give it a proper upbringing through carefully designed cities that would not only enhance surveillance but deliver incentives to partake in quiet sophistication embodied in parks, public lectures, and museums (see Foucault, 1978): "If, in this way, culture is brought within the province of government, its conception is on par with other regions of government. The reform of the self—of the inner life—is just as much dependent on the provision of appropriate technologies for this purpose as is the achievement of desired ends in any other area of social administration" (Bennett, 1995: 18).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Escape to Prison by Michael Welch. Copyright © 2015 The Regents of the University of California. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
List of Illustrations, ix,Preface, xi,
1 • Penal Tourism, 1,
2 • The Museum Effect, 26,
3 • Dream of Order, 53,
4 • Architecture Parlante, 79,
5 • Religion and Governance, 109,
6 • Work and Economics, 140,
7 • Suffering and Science, 167,
8 • Colonialism and Resistance, 195,
9 • Memorialization, 223,
10 • Cultural Power, 249,
References, 265,
Index, 283,