Ghosts of the Gulag : negotiating spectres of the penal past in Northern Russia
Slade, Gavin and Piacentini, Laura and Kravtsova, Alena (2024) Ghosts of the Gulag : negotiating spectres of the penal past in Northern Russia. British Journal of Criminology, 64 (1). pp. 17-33. ISSN 0007-0955 (https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azad013)
Text.
Filename: Slade_etal_BJC_2023_negotiating_spectres_of_the_penal_past_in_Northern_Russia.pdf
Accepted Author Manuscript Restricted to Repository staff only until 10 May 2025. License: Strathprints license 1.0 Download (533kB) | Request a copy |
Abstract
The paper develops the concept of penal spectrality—a sense of the presence of those who endured past penal suffering within environments and among objects related to the practice of punishment. The residents of Ukhta, a Gulag town in Northern Russia, engage uncomfortably with penal spectrality and employ two forms of distancing—pragmatic and cultural—to deal with its melancholic affects. Pragmatically, residents repurpose and reincorporate the things of the penal past into the social order, finding a use-value in them for the present day. Culturally, residents engage in the museumification and commodification of Gulag things. The paper advances two directions for research in ghost criminology. First, we show how uneasy spectral feelings are not passively observed but actively negotiated. Second, in this interaction, we show the immediacy of engaged practical interaction with material objects that points to modes of encountering and misrecognizing penal suffering beyond cultural commodification and penal spectatorship.
-
-
Item type: Article ID code: 86072 Dates: DateEvent1 January 2024Published10 May 2023Published Online23 March 2023AcceptedSubjects: Law > Law (General) Department: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (HaSS) > Social Work and Social Policy > Social Work and Social Policy Depositing user: Pure Administrator Date deposited: 07 Jul 2023 13:30 Last modified: 12 Jun 2024 11:11 URI: https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/86072