Hybrid Culture Discourse: Prisonization of the City (Siberian Case)

Abstract

The author studies the phenomenon of prizonization distinguished on the basis of essential and stable properties of Soviet and post-Soviet culture. To consider the processes of prisonization the model of M. Foucault is still thought quite relevant. According to Foucault, criminal culture is marginalized, squeezed to the outer colony whenever possible. From the point of view of M. Foucault and the Chicago school of sociology studying segregation and zoning principles in the city, prison is a marginal space. It is forced out of official culture, and social prison practices are considered unacceptable "on the outside". Housekeeping of Siberian cities was organized in a different mode: not being able to reject the criminal culture, society went the way of its processing, connection with the official culture. The article analyzes a significant number of sources telling about the fusion of official and criminal culture in the Siberian text. "Notes from the Dead house" by F. M. Dostoevsky, "Prison Camp: Notes of the Warden" by S. D. Dovlatov, "Kolyma stories" by V. Shalamov, as well as the modern domestic chanson of "Siberian" origin, equally contain a reference to the transition of convict, criminal culture beyond the prison walls. At the level of methodology this study allows us to test the research tools of postcolonialism in Criminal Studies – a research direction that has not yet been fully determined even in Western humanitarianism. The proximity of official and criminal culture gave rise to a special discourse, which can be considered in the optics of hybrid culture H. Bhabha. The methodology developed within the boundaries of the postcolonial approach opens up opportunities for analyzing the current social and cultural situation in Siberian cities.