VICTIM STORIES: DOCUMENTING PAIN, PUNISHMENT, PRISON AND POWER

Abstract

Can the crisis of women’s victimization in prison be represented in ways that challenge this harm without its self-perpetuation? As a documentary scholar and maker, this was my overriding concern for an activist video project about women and prison. Certainly, documentary and prison tell us much about each other in their shared capacity to weaken some and strengthen others, by way of technologies of vision and distance, while buttressing hegemonic power. Our project was to minimize the possibility of documentary as prison by taking responsibility for the victim documentary itself as a system of power and pain, objectification and punishment.

Citation

Juhasz, A. (2003), "VICTIM STORIES: DOCUMENTING PAIN, PUNISHMENT, PRISON AND POWER", Sarat, A. and Ewick, P. (Ed.) Punishment, Politics and Culture (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 30), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 247-259. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1059-4337(03)30010-9