Abject (M)Othering: A Narratological Study of the Prison as an Abject and Uncanny Institution

Abstract

The present study investigates how prison comes across as a culturally constructed imaginary. Drawing on narratological methodologies, the study discusses prison as simultaneously real and imagined in society's ongoing communication with and about itself. Through an investigation of how prison is presented in autobiographical prison literature, the study shows how culturally held fears of imprisonment surface in terms of abjection and uncanniness. Previous prison studies have discussed this in terms of civil death and subsequent resurrection. Unlike previous studies, the present study employs the monstrousfeminine motif as a critical device in order to redefine the understanding of prison as abject and uncanny in patriarchal societies. An implementation of the monstrous-feminine motif enables a reading of the prison's particular form of punishment as one that entails incorporation and assimilation; rather than operating on a patriarchal principle of exclusion.

‘You’ve met with a terrible fate, haven’t you?’: A Hauntological Analysis of Carceral Violence in Majora’s Mask

“…This creates an association not only to loss of identity but essentially to loss of life; Link's corporeal entrapment expressed by the masks turns him into something beyond a nonperson, the non-living, a ghost. This may again be linked back to notions of imprisonment as civil death, where confinement and incorporation of the prison is akin to the effacing of life (Fredriksson, 2019). While Link's corporeal entrapment is perhaps the most obvious example, this theme of carceral violence can however be found in the eponymous Majora's Mask itself.…”

“…This temporal confinement is also a reflection of real-life imprisonment (Fredriksson, 2019). Prisons are temporally confining, both in the sense that you 'serve your time', but also since the confinement itself takes you out of time, making you temporally disjointed.…”

“…More recently, culturally imagined understandings of confinement and punishment have been examined in various mediums, including video games. This involves the examination of autobiographical prison literature, demonstrating how patriarchal anxieties regarding punishment is part of the gothic prison imaginary (Fredriksson, 2019), the representations of incarceration, crime and madness in the video games Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009) and Batman: Arkham City (2011) (Fawcett & Kohm, 2019) and the exploration of carcerality as public imaginary in the horror video game series Silent Hill (Steinmetz, 2018). This body of previous research demonstrates the relevance of examining the representations of carcerality and confinement in cultural texts in their own right in order to gain a deeper, critical understanding of these concepts as they may be understood by the public.…”

In the Shadow of the Monster: Gothic Narratives of Violence Prevention

“…Owing its lineage to cultural criminology, as well as to Gothic literature and film theory (Picart and Greek 2007: 13), Gothic criminology draws on cultural criminology, feminist criminology, power-control theory, and Foucauldian perspectives (Picart and Greek 2007: 16). Gothic criminology endeavors to examine "the other" and the societal construction of the monstrous in both "real" and "reel" worlds (see, e.g., Fredriksson 2019). Gothic criminology has also explored the relevance of the Gothic to popular criminology and criminal policies (Rafter and Ystehede 2010), as well as its connection to green criminology (South 2017).…”

“…While also defined as "unhomely," due to Freud's original term unheimlich, the uncanny alludes to sites or places that were once familiar (Freud 1919(Freud /2001Spittle 2011). As a complex analytical framework with multiple meanings, the uncanny concerns itself with doubling, the blurring of boundaries (such as between life and death or self and other), and the repression of that which threatens those boundaries, particularly the sense of self (Fiddler 2013;Fredriksson 2019). The uncanny is the unknowable that separates and yet, paradoxically, unsettles boundaries, which often causes a haunting sense of anxiety.…”