The Bastille Effect: Transforming Sites of Political Imprisonment

Description

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. As conceptualized throughout this richly illustrated book, the Bastille Effect represents the unique ways that former prisons and detention centers are transformed, both physically and culturally. In their afterlives, these sites deliver critiques of political imprisonment and the sustained efforts to hold perpetrators accountable for state violence. However, for that narrative to surface, the sites are cleansed of their profane past, and in some cases clergy are even enlisted to perform purifying rituals that grant the sites a new place identity as memorials. For example, at Villa Grimaldi, a former detention and torture center in Santiago, Chile, activists condemn the brutal Pinochet dictatorship by honoring the memory of victims, allowing the space to emerge as a "park for peace." Throughout the Southern Cone of Latin America, and elsewhere around the globe, carceral sites have been dramatically repurposed into places of enlightenment that offer inspiring allegories of human rights. Interpreting the complexities of those common threads, this book weaves together a broad range of cultural, interdisciplinary, and critical thought to offer new insights into the study of political imprisonment, collective memory, and postconflict societies. Cover Title page Copyright page Dedication page Contents List of Illustrations Preface Part One. The Sacred and the Profane 1. Cultural Afterlives 2. States of Confinement Part Two. In Search of Signs 3. Sites of Trouble 4. Sites of Condor Part Three. Diagrams of Control 5. Economic Forces 6. Catholic Nuances 7. Architectural Designs Part Four. Technologies of Power 8. Censorship and Propaganda 9. Torture and Torment 10. Exterminate and Denial Part Five. Performing Memory 11. Consecrate and Desecrate 12. Places of Resistance References Index