From spectral images to phantom architecture: a (spirit) guide to Ghost Criminology - Michael Fiddler
Location:
Virtual Event
Date/time
Thu 4 November 2021
13:00-14:00
The University of Edinburgh Criminology Reading Group Seminar Series 2021/2022 presents:
From spectral images to phantom architecture: a (spirit) guide to Ghost Criminology
Dr Michael Fiddler, Associate Professor of Criminology, University of Greenwich
About the event
Drawing upon recent criminological scholarship examining spectrality, this paper sets out a hauntological framework for exploring traumas of the past and future being inflicted upon the living in the present. Given the discipline’s spectral turn, we can begin to capture those figures, groups and concepts that have been rendered invisible, as well as attend to harms that have persistent afterlives.
The intention here is to offer an introduction to what we are calling a Ghost Criminology. This is a sub-discipline that seeks to capture those cultural forces that reveal our wavering present, as well as those that hover between presence and absence. It is a space to explore harms that are experienced as ‘out of joint’, and how they either return or presage future harm. It is a project that is drawn, then, toward Avery Gordon’s framing of haunting as revealing “repressed or unresolved social violences” (Radway, 2008: ix).
We will explore these ideas of presence and absence, debt and inheritance, visibility and invisibility by focusing upon two examples of the spectral. We will first look at those visual systems that entwined the invisible and the criminological imagination: the optogram and spirit photography. This will lead to us ‘conjuring’ a spectral image that seeks to capture the unseen and ‘out-of joint’ effects of ecological harms. We can generate a hauntological image that allows us to conceptualize harms that exist across a collapsed past, present and future. This is an image that can help us to understand the persistent impact of the “no longer”, as well as the harms of the “not yet” (Fisher, 2014).
Secondly, we turn to the phantom architecture of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon. This was to be a building of incorporeal gazes and voices. Using analyses of both Bentham’s architectural drawings and letters, the paper concludes by setting out a framework for understanding the ‘haunted’ and ‘haunting’ nature of this inspirited building.
About the speaker
Michael Fiddler is an Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of Greenwich. He joined the University in 2006 after completing his PhD at Keele University. His thesis explored the production of space within and around prisons. His published research has explored the ways in which space, architecture and visual arts coalesce to inform understandings of crime and punishment. His current research is informed by Jacques Derrida’s notion of hauntology and he is a co-editor of the forthcoming edited collection ‘Ghost Criminology’, published by New York University Press.
This event will take place for around an hour with an opportunity for Q&A and discussion towards the end. The event is free for all and will take place on Zoom. Please register to get the zoom link!
Any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch!
We look forward to seeing you!
Image credit: Photo by Syarafina Yusof on Unsplash