Punishment, border crossings and the powers of horror
| Author | Claire Valier |
| DOI | 10.1177/136248060200600305 |
| Published date | 01 August 2002 |
| Date | 01 August 2002 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Punishment, border crossings
and the powers of horror
CLAIRE VALIER
University of Leeds, UK
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’.
Theoretical Criminology
© 2002 SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks
and New Delhi.
1362–4806(200208)6:3
Vol. 6(3): 319–337; 026026
319
Key Words
abjection • borders • gothic • moral panic • punishment
In her recent novel Border Crossing, Pat Barker painted two striking
images, two scenes becoming all too familiar within the iconography of
contemporary penality:
He switched on the news. The Kelsey murder was the second item. Close-
ups of flowers left at the scene of the crime, blowzy chrysanthemums, ‘Love’
in blue ink dribbling down a wet card. Then pictures of a white van
accelerating rapidly, pursued by angry crowds.
(Barker, 2001: 176)
Tearful tributes, enraged vigilantes . . . these two news images evoke the
emotional populism through which the return of retributivism has unfolded
on our screens over the last few decades. The powers of horror are an
important feature of contemporary punitive populism, and index the place
of emotion and fantasy in both institutional practices and political life. The
power that operates in and through penality is hence much more than a
matter of what is seen, known and displayed, whether in panoptical,
governmental or spectacular practices. This power also involves the invoca-
tion of horrors and imaginative engagement. Many social commentators,
legal professionals and academics talk today about the emotionality, the
highly cathectic character, of contemporary penality. How is fear made
palpable, so that one not only imagines it, but can seem to touch it, to feel
it? What do we make of the way in which these feelings touch us as visceral
passions? How are these raw emotions implicated in the return to retribu-
tivism and the fearful agenda of public protection? An analysis of the
powers of horror addresses questions of this kind, seeking to explain and to
disarm the gothic seductions of contemporary punitive populism.
Gothicism, typified by gruesome injury and trauma, and menacing
shadowy figures, is a prominent feature of the discourses of public protec-
tion and vengeance. 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 the 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 breach-
ing of established spatial entities and categories, and that focus attention on
the potent effects of flows and the in-between. Concepts of this kind
Theoretical Criminology 6(3)
320
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