The tutelary architecture of immigration detention prisons and the spectacle of 'necessary suffering'

Architectural Theory Review

Volumn 13, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 206-221

  Pugliese, Joseph ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 82455207424     PISSN: 13264826     EISSN: 17550475     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13264820802216841     Document Type: Review

References (57)

1. See, for example, Michael Giebelhausen (ed.), The Architecture of the Museum, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003.
2. Both Woomera and Baxter Immigration Detention Centres were recently shut down after years of public protests against the brutalizing and inhumane conditions in which refugees and asylum seekers were kept. However, other centres continue to remain open, including Port Headland and Villawood. In the closing months of 2007, Villawood Immigration Detention centre was the scene of protests, hunger strikes, attempted suicides and acts of self-harm. The 501 detainees at Villawood have held these protests 'during the election campaign to bring attention to the injustices associated with the Immigration practice.' Ian Rintoul, 'Press Release: More Hunger Strikes Begin', http://www.safecom.org. au/villawood2007.htm. Accessed 14 November 2007.
3. Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, London: Rebel Press, 2006, p. 7.
4. Norman Johnston, The Human Cage: A Brief History of the Prison, New York: Walker and Company, 1973, p. 16.
5. Johnston, Human Cage, p. 27.
6. Iona Spens, 'Introduction: "A Simple Idea in Architecture', in Iona Spens (ed.), Architecture of Incarceration, London: Academy Editions, 1994, p. 11.
7. For a detailed historical analysis of the nexus between prison architecture and its intended moral effects, see Robin Evans, The Fabrication of Virtue: English Prison Architecture, 1750-1840, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
8. Spens, 'Introduction', p. 11.
9. This is in contrast to the contemporary focus on improving the architectural and design elements of conventional criminal prisons in Australia. See, for example, Graham Brawn, 'The Evolution of Australian Correctional Design', paper delivered at Prison Planning, Design and Construction conference, Melbourne, 23-24 October 2007. Available online at http://www.lgcentre.com.au/ adtracker/redirect. php?id=143. Accessed 22 February 2008.
10. Sean McConville, 'The Architectural Realization of Penal Ideas', in Leslie Fairweather and Sean McConville (eds.), Prison Architecture: Policy, Design and Experience, Oxford: Design Press, 2003, p. 10.
11. Thomas A. Markus, 'Can History Be a Guide to the Design of Prisons?', in Spens, Architecture of Incarceration, p. 16.
12. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Alan Sheridan (trans.), Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1997, p. 74.
13. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, pp. 115-116.
14. For a detailed discussion of the Act in relation to undocumented refugees and asylum seekers, see Mary Crock, Ben Saul and Azadeh Dastyari, Future Seekers II: Refugees and Irregular Migration in Australia, Annandale: Federation Press, 2006.
15. See Joseph Pugliese, 'Subcutaneous Law: Embodying the Migration Amendment Act 1992', The Australian Feminist Law Journal, 21(2004):23-34.
16. Connie Levett, 'Detention centre modelled on prison to close', The Sydney Morning Herald, 18-19 August 2007, p. 2.
17. See 'Anna's Story', Four Corners, Australian Broadcasting Commission Television, broadcast: 4 April 2005.
18. See Joseph Pugliese, 'Subcutaneous Law' and 'Penal Asylum: Refugees, Ethics, Hospitality', Borderlands, 1. 1 (2002) at: http://www. borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol1no1-2002/pugliese.htm
19. and Suvendrini Perera, 'What is a Camp?' Borderlands, 1, 1(2002), available online at http://www.borderlandsejournal. adelaide.edu.au/vol1no1- 2002/perera.htm. Accessed 15 December 2007.
20. I discuss this in more detail in Joseph Pugliese, 'The Event-Trauma of the Carceral Post-Human', Social Semiotics, 17, 1(March 2007):63-86.
21. Olivier Razac, Barbed Wire: A Political History, New York: The New Press, 2002, p. 85.
22. Razac, Barbed Wire, p. 89.
23. Rahman Shiri, 'Romeo and Juliet Deserted', Southerly, 63(2004):70.
24. McConville, 'Architectural Realization of Penal Idea', p. 13.
25. See Pugliese, 'Event-Trauma', pp. 69-70.
26. Khalid Al Sharifi, 'Rain falls⋯ ', Southerly, 64(2004):52.
27. Debord, Society of Spectacle, p. 7.
28. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998, pp. 166-180.
29. Perera, 'What is a Camp?'
30. Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005, p. 87.
31. Quoted in Iain Lygo, News Overboard, Sydney: Southerly Change Media, 2004, p. 92.
32. Quoted in Lygo, News Overboard, p. 92.
33. Thomas A. Markus, Buildings and Power, Freedom and Control, London: Routledge, 1993, p. 25.
34. Tom Mann, Desert Sorrow: Asylum Seekers at Woomera, Kent Town: Wakefield Press, 2003, pp. 6-7
35. and Levett, 'Detention Centre Modelled on Prison', p. 2.
36. Foucault, Discpline and Punish, p. 187.
37. Mark Dow, American Gulag: Inside U. S. Immigration Prisons, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004, p. 36.
38. Marc Falcoff (ed.), Poems from Guantánamo, Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2007, p. 41.
39. Sami Al Haj, 'Humiliated in the Shackles', in Falcoff (ed.), Poems from Guantánamo, p. 42.
40. Rosalind E. Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994, p. 9.
41. Krauss, Originality of the Avant-Garde, p. 21.
42. Matthew G. Edney, 'The Patronage of Science and the Creation of Imperial Space, 1799-1843', Cartographica, 30(1993):62.
43. R. J. P. Kain and E. Baigent, The Cadrastral Map in the Service of the State, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992, p. 329.
44. Nicholas Blomley, 'Law, Property, and the Geography of Violence: The Frontier, the Survey, and the Grid', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 93(2003):131.
45. See Maria Giannacopoulos, 'Mabo, Tampa and the Non-Justiciability of Sovereignty', in Suvendrini Perera (ed.), Our Patch, Perth: Network Books, 2007, pp. 45-60.
46. On the violence that guarantees the force of law, see Jacques Derrida, 'Force of Law: The "Mystical Foundation of Authority, "' in D. Cornell, M. Rosenfeld and D. G. Carlson (eds.), Deconstruction and the Possibiilty of Justice, New York: Routledge, 1992, pp. 3-67.
47. Blomley, 'Law, Property', p. 132.
48. See Don McMaster, Asylum Seekers: Australia's Refugee Response, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001, pp. 20-37.
49. See Pugliese, 'Subcutaneous Law' and 'Penal Asylum.'
50. On the transposition of prisons on pre-existing military camps and stockades, see Ian Dunbar and Leslie Fairweather, 'English Prison Design', in Prison Architecture, p. 21;
51. and Norman Johnston, Forms of Constraint: A History of Prison Architecture, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000, p. 144.
52. Villawood immigration detention centre has been called the "'the most prison-like" of all Australia's detention centres and should be closed immediately, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission has recommended.' Stephanie Peating, 'Villawood Targeted as Worst in Country', The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 January 2008, p. 5.
53. In a forthcoming paper, I address the exercise of what I term vernacular violence in the context of immigration prisons like Villawood Detention Centre that are not situated in some remote and isolated desert location, but that are actually positioned within suburban and civilian locations. See Joseph Pugliese, 'Civil Modalities of Refugee Trauma, Death and Necrological Transport', Social Identities, forthcoming.
54. Johnston, Forms of Constraint, p. 85.
55. Angela Y. Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003, p. 84.
56. Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete?, p. 84.
57. Stephen Shaw, 'Prison Architecture and the Politics of Reform', in Prison Architecture, p. 158.