Live, virtual, and spectral: being present at the prison (tour)^*

* An earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the 2017 National Communication Association Convention in Dallas, TX.

ABSTRACT

Drawing on several years of bringing students on a tour of a maximum security prison, I posit the prison (tour) as a live performance that is only legible through distinct but interlocking registers of presence. I argue that the prison (tour) positions and assembles recalcitrant bodies conditioned by live, virtual, and spectral encounters with each other. The convergence of present and absent bodies at the site of the prison and the intermingling of these three registers reveal that while the prison (tour) may function primarily as an embodied performance of discipline, it unravels in salient ways and the participants therein find meaningful, if often subtle, ways of exploiting the resulting ruptures.

KEYWORDS:

• Absence
• pedagogy
• presence
• prison tourism
• tourism studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Bryan J. McCann http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5012-6072

Notes

* An earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the 2017 National Communication Association Convention in Dallas, TX.

1 The course as a whole takes a primarily cultural studies approach to matters of crime and criminality, emphasizing the performative and rhetorical dimensions thereof. Enrolled students take quizzes and exams, write works of cultural criticism regarding communicative aspects of the criminal justice system, and write a reflection essay based on their experience of the prison visit (or an alternative writing assignment if they do not join us for the tour). The course relies heavily on discussion and group activities, as well as collective criticisms of mass mediated and other texts related to crime and punishment.

2 IRB ID #3662.

3 Students who choose not to take the prison trip instead complete an interview assignment for which they write an essay based on a conversation with an individual possessing some sort of compelling experiential connection to the criminal justice system. This person may be a formerly incarcerated individual, a police officer, a lawyer, or someone else whose lived experience affords them unique insights into the communicative dynamics of law and order in the U.S. The sample of reflection essays from which I drew for this essay were written by a group of seventeen students (out of 28 enrolled students). Fifteen of them presented as white, one was black (out of six black students enrolled in the course), and one Asian American. Fifteen of the students were women and two were men. One student identified as queer.

4 One student who I mentioned earlier, the young black man whose father was imprisoned for most of his childhood, refused to take part in the group photograph.

5 One student commented in her reflection essay, “I wasn’t expecting it to be cold, so I showed up to the bus wearing yoga pants, a short sleeve t-shirt, and a sweatshirt tied around my waist. Since it was cold I had to take my sweatshirt off of my waist and actually put it on my body which ends up exposing my rear end in the tight yoga pants which was not originally part of my plan.” In general, many of the women who enroll in my class and experience the prison (tour) disclose their discomfort about being physically conspicuous in the presence of incarcerated men – most of whom are black. There are many salient entailments here. First, these students are vulnerable to sexual objectification and other forms of violence in ways that I simply am not. Thus, I must acknowledge that the women in my class live their lives with a learned sensitivity to the male gaze. It is also true that students are, on balance, far more vulnerable to sexual violence on campus, at college parties or bars, or in other spaces they share with more familiar bodies than they are at the prison (tour). Yet, they understand the prison (tour) as a site of exceptional violence, largely because the register of the virtual has constituted it as such. As Curry explains, the prison-industrial complex is a site of sexual voyeurism that places black masculine bodies, which figure as always already sexually violent in public culture, on display for the white gaze. Thus, my students’ performances at the live prison (tour) vis-à-vis their sexualities respond to heavily mediated circulations of imprisoned black masculine bodies as predatory and always on the hunt for white feminine flesh.

6 We encountered this notorious man during my second class tour of the prison. At this time, I had not yet secured IRB approval or student consent to use their written reflections. Thus, I am drawing solely on my recollections of the experience.

7 The prison we visited, as well as many others across the country, rely very heavily on faith-based rehabilitation programming that almost always promotes a conservative Christian worldview. Thus, even as the sight of students and incarcerated men joining hands in prayer can function as a powerful performance of intimacy across lines of difference, it also potentially further entrenches the disciplinary function of certain faith traditions inside and outside the prison (see Ridgeway).

Additional information

Funding

Travel associated with this project was supported by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Louisiana State University and the Department of Communication Studies, Louisiana State University.