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Abstract
This paper considers the place of creativity within UK Immigration Removal Centres (IRCs) as a way of developing understandings of resistance within these spaces. It draws upon empirical research undertaken within an IRC, to explore the role of improvised music-making between staff and detainees. This work arises out of a concern that framings of resistance within IRCs have been characterised by acts that intentionally challenge the particular manifestation of sovereign power within these sites, where non-citizens are incarcerated. This study interferes with the prevailing view that for an act to be considered resistance, it must be characterised by intent, and follows Foucault to argue that to resist something is to create something, as ‘inventive, as mobile’ as power itself. Consequently, this paper explores creativity as ‘poiesis’, drawing upon work by Agamben and Deleuze to explore the potentiality of improvised music within an IRC.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my supervisors Louise Amoore and Angharad Closs Stephens, together with Lizzie Richardson, Peter Forman and the two anonymous reviewers for their help developing this paper.
Notes
1. Given that undocumented migrants are largely invisible, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) states that it does not publish data estimating the size of the ‘illegal’ migrant population (ONS Citation2015). In 2007, the London School of Economics estimated the number of irregular migrants to be 618,000, based on the 2001 Census data, with a margin of error of 200,000 (Gordon et al. Citation2009; Bosworth Citation2014). Whilst media outlets, and political parties have claimed that this figure is considerably higher, it is near impossible to know how many individuals are in the UK illegally. However, it can be reasonably assumed that this figure is significantly greater than the approximately 3300 individuals in IRCs in the UK.
2. As of June 2015, Music in Detention worked in 4 IRCs (Harmondsworth, Colnbrook, Campsfield House and Yarl’s Wood), with the specificities of access determined by the regime management of each centre.
3. The knowledge produced from this fieldwork is positioned within the space–time of the music workshop and cannot be separated from it. Thus, this research cannot be extrapolated to other situations. What then, is the utility of this study? This study attempts to address these concerns by utilising the example as a device, reflecting Agamben’s discussion of the example as neither inductive nor deductive but instead as playing alongside the ‘universal’ as ‘it is never possible to separate its exemplarity from its singularity’ (Citation2009, 31). The examples from the workshop I attended are not intended to be reflection of a general picture, yet neither are they limited to their own particularities; instead, the example dances between the ‘singular’ and the ‘universal’, as a device to ‘signal something about the world’, and ‘make intelligible’ a broader political context (Amoore and Hall Citation2013, 97; Agamben Citation2009, 9).
4. The word ‘intent’ is derived from the Latin intendere (verb), or intentus (adjective). It means ‘to stretch out, to strain’ (tendere) ‘towards’ (in), to direct action towards a purpose (Ainsworth, Morell, and Carey Citation1823). The notion of telos, an end goal, is therefore bound up with the idea of a subject acting with intent.
5. Given the breadth of philosophical engagement with ‘potentiality’ (originating in Aristotelian metaphysics and since woven throughout much of continental philosophy: most pertinently in Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, Benjamin, Derrida, Deleuze and Agamben), this paper specifically utilises Agamben’s reading of Deleuze to engage with poiesis and potentiality (Citation2014). Such a reading of potentiality therefore aligns with Deleuze’s conception of pure becoming, which (through his reading of Nietzsche) he articulates as the ‘enveloping’ rather than an exhaustion of actuality, thereby removing any association with ‘telos’ (Deleuze Citation2004; Ikoniadou Citation2014, 18).
6. All names of staff, detainees and Music in Detention volunteers are pseudonyms.
7. The specific country Joseph is from, together with the management company running the IRC have been concealed to protect the officer’s identity.
8. Music in Detention note that staff participation usually takes the form of either joining in the activity or encouraging detainees to take part. However, there are reports of officers declining to join in, and in one case, showing distain by ‘covering their ears’, which impacts upon the atmosphere of the room (Bruce Citation2015, 15).