Registering Grievances, Exploding Frames Prisoner Narratives and the Memorialization of Prison Violence

• Published in: English studies in Canada Vol. 48; no. 1; pp. 11 - 28
• Main Author: Demers, Jason
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Edmonton Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE) 01.03.2022; Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English; ESC: English Studies in Canada
• Subjects: Archives & records; Exhibitions; History; Imprisonment; Methods; Mounted police; Museum exhibitions; Museums; Narratives; Native peoples; Police; Prison discipline; Prison violence; Prisoners; Prisons; Public speaking; Solitary confinement; Tourism; Violence; Canada; Saskatchewan; Alberta; India; Saskatchewan Canada
• DOI: 10.1353/esc.2022.a932547
• ISSN: 0317-0802; 1913-4835

THE ROTARY MUSEUM OF POLICE AND CORRECTIONS in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, commemorates the roles of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (rcmp), the local police, and the province s prisons. Curated as such, the museum not only memorializes the acts of policing and punishment, it also reinforces the authority and force of Canadian law while helping to establish a community identity within Saskatchewans prison town-a town of thirty-eight-thousand people that houses two provincial prisons and a federal penitentiary. In these lectures, Foucault is interested in mechanisms of exclusion enacted for the preservation of the human race-the prison and the camp-but these are also the lectures in which Foucault speaks of subjugated knowledges and genealogy. The Rotary Museum is not unique in its representation of the local history of law enforcement and incarceration but instead joins a growing global roster of museums, many operating out of decommissioned sites, that speak to the ubiquity of policing and prisons within the global social fabric.