Book review: Valerie Hartouni, Visualising Atrocity: Arendt, Evil, and the Optics of Thoughtlessness and Christian Delage and Peter Goodrich (eds), The Scene of the Mass Crime: History, Film, and International Tribunals
| Author | Wayne Morrison |
| Date | 01 May 2014 |
| Published date | 01 May 2014 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480613506639 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
Theoretical Criminology 18(2)
enabling them to engage and shape collectively how the characters should act. In Brazil,
prisoners and prison officers have come together to produce plays that consider the ter-
rible conditions within the prisons. In 2006, this reviewer was lucky to be present when
Boal, the groundbreaking director, was putting on a ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’. I wit-
nessed the crucial role of negotiation, often between those with control and those with-
out. Walsh is right that this approach could be beneficial in prisons outside of Brazil,
especially South Africa.
A common thread in this excellent book is how and why humanity emerges and is also
taken away within prisons. In line with Boal’s approach to theatre, imprisonment is a
constant negotiation and the arts can play an important role within this contested space.
The walls of prison need not remove the freedom to be human. Cox and Gelsthorpe quote
Johnny, a prisoner from HMP Wayland who, after participating in a music project, says,
‘I feel human again’ (p. 267). However, even if minds are freer, the physical constraints
remain:
Preachers come here talking about freedom. You can be free.
Even in here they say.
The word will set you free they say. All you have to do is
Believe they say.
When they are through talking about freedom
They leave and all of us free people
Return to our cells.
(Prisoner called Yarbrough, 2008) (p. 186)
Reference
Wacquant L (2001) Deadly symbiosis: When ghetto and prison meet and mesh. Punishment and
Society 3(1): 95–133.
Valerie Hartouni, Visualising Atrocity: Arendt, Evil, and the Optics of Thoughtlessness, New
York University Press: New York, 2012; 199 pp., 14 illustrations (B&W): 978814769768
(pbk), US$23
Christian Delage and Peter Goodrich (eds), The Scene of the Mass Crime: History, Film,
and International Tribunals, Routledge: London and New York, 2013; 227 pp. + xii, 42
illustrations (colour and B&W): 9780415688956 (pbk), US$42.95
Reviewed by: Wayne Morrison, Queen Mary University of London, UK
These are two radically different books: Valerie Hartouni’s Visualising Atrocity is a
sustained and prolonged thesis; Delage and Goodrich’s The Scene of the Mass Crime is
an eclectic collection that only loosely builds on the editors’ introductory comments.
Delage and Goodrich lay out the new challenge: the classical trinity of ordo, lex, medium
(social order, law, medium: the combination of technology and institutions of power) is
transforming. The material form inaugurated by the printing press is now overtaken by
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digital forms and virtual relays. No one can dispute their claim that photography, film
and the expansion of digital forms are having a dramatic, if not yet fully explored, impact
upon the preconditions and relay of legality, nor that such a transformation should serve
as the foundation for a new account of trials of international crime and atrocity. The text
they produce, however, is strangely conservative. While calling attention to the need to
interpret and critique images of atrocity, the volume seems to accept a...
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