Anticipating Individuals: Modes of Vision and Their Social Consequence in a Papua New Guinean

Prison
Author(s): Adam Reed
Source: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Mar., 1999), pp. 43-56
Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2660962
Accessed: 28-03-2015 20:37 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 129.199.59.249 on Sat, 28 Mar 2015 20:37:50 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

ANTICIPATING INDIVIDUALS: MODES OF VISION

AND THEIR SOCIAL CONSEQUENCE IN
A PAPUA NEW GUINEAN PRISON
ADAM REED

Universityof Cambridge

This article explores experiences of vision in Bomana prison, Papua New Guinea. It
examines what prisoners themselves regard as the visual limits and capacities of incarceration.
Foucault describes the role of penal technologies of surveillance in the rise of a modern
subjectivity in Europe and America. But in Bomana prisoners recognize very different modes
of vision, which have quite separate consequences. These are drawn out with reference to the
work of Strathern and Levin. Prisoners are shown to privilege an aesthetic of darkness or
concealment, but also of clearing or divine light. Both are grounded in an assumed
connexion between seer and seen. The article aims to expand an understanding of sociality
in Melanesia through opening the possibilities of vision.

Since Foucault wrote Discipline and punish (1977), discussions of incarceration

and its technologies of surveillance have been at the forefront of the poststructuralist project to decentre the modern subject: the notion of a sovereign,
authorial individual, who looks inwards for motivation and assumes a state
outside society and its knowledge practices. Like other French philosophers of
this century (see Jay 1993), Foucault associates a modern subjectivity with one
particularmode of vision, the Enlightenment legacy of a disinterested gaze. Here
the visible always appears at a distance, establishing an opposition between
subject and object, with the former in possession of a gaze which objectifies and
then grasps whatever is placed before it. This mode of vision, with its spectatorial
subject, refuses dialogue: thus eliminating any recognition of the connexion
between seer and seen (Levin 1988; 1997). In order to resist its hegemony (the
mode of vision is held to infuse modern paradigms of knowledge), Foucault aims
to describe alternative visions, to demonstrate the historical specificity of this
objectifying gaze. He uses vision to undermine vision (Flynn 1993: 273; and see
de Certeau 1986). The example Foucault chooses is a transformation in the visual
technology of the penitentiary.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century it is said that an architecture
emerged in Europe and America which drew upon principles of the
Enlightenment. Indeed, Foucault here identifies a historical break between what
he calls 'classical' and modern forms of vision. While the architecture of a
classical age threw light upon the Sovereign and directed gazes in that single
direction, these new structures aimed to illuminate everyone, and in particular
J. Roy. anthrop.Inst. (N.S.) 5, 43-56

This content downloaded from 129.199.59.249 on Sat, 28 Mar 2015 20:37:50 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

44

ADAM REED

those regarded immature or deviant (the child, the criminal, the insane, the
work-shy etc.). Within prisons, for example, Foucault claims that 'the principle
of the dungeon is reversed; daylight and the overseer's gaze capture the inmate
more effectively than darkness, which afforded all a sort of protection' (1980:
147). An oppressive transparency is said to take hold, one which renders
everyone visible and thus subject to calculation (1977: 193). Foucault chooses to
focus upon the prison because it is in this institution that technologies of illumination reach their apotheosis. Here he refers to the Panopticon, Bentham's
model for a social order built upon axioms of surveillance.
Bentham designed his panoptic building in a manner which ensured that
prisoners never knew when they were being observed. From a central watchtower supervisors could view inmates in their separate cells, who as a consequence would be compelled always to act in anticipation of this anonymous gaze.
Bentham estimated that such all-pervasive surveillance would encourage
inmates to watch themselves, exercise self-assessment and self-control. Prisoners
would therefore become not just the objects of supervision, but owners of an
assertive gaze which could be directed inwards. It was this claim of reformation
through observation that attracted Foucault and led him to postulate the importance of penal technologies of vision in the rise of a modern subject. This gaze is
seen to capture and make visible, to produce, a certain kind of individual.
Foucault's attempt to subvert the hegemony of transparency (he suggests that
the panoptic ideal is spread across society) by presenting its historical specificity
is taken up by Levin, but he argues that multiple modes of vision might equally
be demonstrated, and thus the dominant subjectivity displaced, by appealing to
cultural difference. In this regard he wants anthropology to do more. The call is
made for a discipline responsive to 'different ways of being, different visions'
(Levin 1988: 13).
In the anthropology of Melanesia the last two decades have seen challenges
emerge to the dominant mode of vision and the knowledge practices it supports.
Suspicions have fallen on the assumptions of subjectivity informed by this vision.
Feld (1982), for instance, asks us to consider a social world where sound rather
than vision is privileged. He complains that anthropological discourse is
governed by visual metaphors. Feld's criticism is influenced by his own research
experience among the Kaluli, a people who live in a heavily forested area of Papua
New Guinea and for whom the auditory sense is indeed vital. In such an
environment, where vision is restricted, sound becomes the more receptive
sensory experience. Anthropological metaphors, he contends, should be altered
accordingly. Feld's argument borrows from a long heritage of continental
philosophy, which stresses the value of sound over vision. While vision objectifies and establishes distance, sound allows participation and dialogue. This
view, however, reduces vision to a singular modality (a straight, non-reciprocal
gaze), and thus denies its own ability to undermine objectifying practice.
Levin wants anthropology to open multiple visions, to place a limit on the
grasping habit. Alongside acknowledging the importance of sound, this project
should expand the possibilities of vision itself Gell (1995), who worked among
the Umeda, another deep-forest people, notes the visual alternatives which that
environment provides. He argues that the landscape, including measurements of
distance, is experienced through sound, and that in such circumstances the eye
becomes an organ of intimacy (1995: 239). Here vision evinces a sense of

This content downloaded from 129.199.59.249 on Sat, 28 Mar 2015 20:37:50 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

ADAM REED

45

proximity, of sexual play for instance, but also of danger (the Umeda always lived
under fear of surprise attack from their neighbours). Vision is seen to do more
than enframe or establish an interval between observing subject and object.
Insights into alternative modes of vision are not, however, exclusively tied to
experiences of what appear extreme visual environments. The anthropological
challenge to assumptions of modern subjectivity, and by implication its dominant
gaze, is led by Strathern, someone more familiar with the open, broad vistas of
New Guinea Highland valleys. Strathern (1988) works with an image of
Melanesian sociality (the designation 'Melanesian' is here a deliberate fiction; not
in the sense of falsehood, but of a claim which always remains provisional and
specific to the work intended), ground out through careful reflection on conventional terms of social analysis. Her reading of her own and others' ethnographic
material aims to disturb the comfort of these terms, to contest taken-for-granted
figures such as the juridical subject, a rights-bearing individual who acts to create
ties and thereby cement society. In their place, Strathern presents the 'relation'
(1988; 1991; 1992; 1995), an acknowledgement that among Melanesians, persons
are never imagined outside, or before, social ties. The subject is always decentred,
understood and revealed through distinguishing relations. This sociality offers a
different vision, one not fully excavated by Strathern herself
It is therefore the task of this article to explore what Strathern and Melanesian
anthropology might still add to the project, as envisaged by Foucault and Levin,
to limit the spectatorial subject. Attention is focused upon my own research
experience among the prisoners of Bomana gaol, just outside Port Moresby. The
example stimulates because it retains a trace image, in its architecture and organization, of the panoptic ideal, as exported by colonial government to Papua New
Guinea. The reader is invited to keep this image in mind, tojudge it against what
prisoners themselves distinguish as the visual characteristics of incarceration.

A darkplace
The prison at Bomana stands on cleared ground next to a bend in the Laloki river.
Encircled by a 25-ft high perimeter fence (a recent gift of the Australian
government), it contains a soccer pitch, offices and a chapel, as well as various
compounds behind which men are housed.' Prisoners share accommodation in
dormitory-style cells: long, narrow breeze-block structures which hold between
twenty and forty persons. Everything is built on baked, orange soil, hardened by
the sun, which beats down remorselessly and reflects off corrugated iron roofs
and walls. To relieve the heat prisoners spend their days chasing shadows,
moving around the compound in search of shade. This activity is only interrupted during the brief months of the rainy season, when sharp blades of grass
break the ground and the prison changes colour. The rains bring cool winds but
also mosquitoes, which crowd the cells and spread sickness. Once every couple
of years the waters of the Laloki rise, burst their banks and flood the low-lying
parts of the prison. But the sun always returns.
The compounds at Bomana are organized to reveal classifications first laid
down in colonial penal documents. These divide the prison into convict, remand
and juvenile wings (on 12 November 1995 the prison registered 454 convicts,
255 remand inmates and 24 juveniles). Within the convict section prisoners are
separated again, divided into compounds according to their 'risk factor'. Once a

This content downloaded from 129.199.59.249 on Sat, 28 Mar 2015 20:37:50 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

46

ADAM REED

month their behaviour is reassessed and transfers take place between

compounds. Each move recreates the effect of a classificatory schema, drawing a
distinction between the materiality of the prison and the plan or structure it is
held to represent.
This very modern effect (see Mitchell 1988) requires an architecture which
supervises and directs strategic gazes. From points around the prison, watchtowers rise above the perimeter fence and thus provide arcs of surveillance.
Standing in these crow's-nests, warders look down upon the roofs of the cells
and gain sweeping views of the various compounds. At ground level a guardhouse is situated next to the gate through which convicts and remand inmates
must pass in order to enter or leave their compounds. As they do so warders on
duty stop and search them, refusing passage to some and waving others on. At the
perimeter fence another double-gate guards access to the outside world. In
between these barriers prisoners are lined up, counted and frisked; sent out to
join work parties or attend court. When they return they receive the same
treatment.
Despite these practices and the architecture of surveillance, male prisoners
characterize Bomana as a 'dark place' (dakpies). A gloom is seen to hang over the
compounds. Men regard themselves as cast in shadows, cut off from relations
with women and others they know outside. These absent ties, which throw a
figurative pall, sadden them and cause pain. Inmates complain that Bomana is the
'last place in the country' (las pies long kantri);a site of exile where men are left
feeling alone and forgotten. Here everything familiar is taken away: 'you cannot
see your forest, your river, mountains and rocks, your pigs, dogs and children.
You leave all things and come and live inside the prison'. This sense of loss, regret
at being forcibly concealed, dominates their horizons.
The gloom is considered thickest over the maximum security detention centre
located just outside the perimeter fence. This facility holds recaptured fugitives
and those who commit serious offences whilst at Bomana. Here inmates (the
number varies from ten to fifteen) are housed individually in dark, windowless
cells and confined for minimum three-month periods. A detainee, this time cut
off even from friends in the main compounds, is said to live completely alone,
hidden from view. During the day he may come outside, meet others and wander
around the institution's yard; but this space remains confining, encircled by a tall
corrugated iron fence which prevents glimpses of the world beyond. Inmates can
see nothing but the sky above and those duty warders who stand and observe
them from a platform which runs along the top of the fence. The sight of these
khaki-clad figures, who stare down at them as if peering into the depths of a pit,
inspires men to describe the institution as an underground dwelling. Blocked
from horizontal vision, from viewing familiar landmarks and faces, they live in
cavernous seclusion, in a place which inmates state 'does not look much like
Papua New Guinea'.
Foucault distinguished the modern penitentiary as a site of illumination, an
architecture which made individuals visible. But prisoners at Bomana, whether
in the main compounds or the maximum security institution, regard the visual
qualities of the penal institution in a very different manner. The relations which
the prison fence forbids retain a presence as absence or darkness. Architecture is
here characterized by its act of concealment, by the omission it creates. Prisoners,
hidden and distressed at these lost ties, recognize an aesthetic which may also

This content downloaded from 129.199.59.249 on Sat, 28 Mar 2015 20:37:50 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

ADAM REED

47

carry generative attributes.

Men observe that in Bomana their bodies grow fat and strong. Nourished by
three regular meals a day, they sit and watch themselves expand. In prison, they
explain, men are compelled to rest: to consume a diet of brown rice and tinned
fish, to retire early and sleep long hours, to wash and keep themselves tidy.
Separated from women, they also preserve their sexual energy. But nourishment
and rest, while important, are not regarded as sufficient factors for growth. Talk
of enlargement centres around an aesthetic of concealment, about what being
hidden from view allows.
Anthropologists working in Melanesia have noticed a correspondence
between ideas of concealment and growth. Strathern (1988: 227), for instance,
suggests that in certain societies the relation between mother and fetus is not
considered to be based upon shared substance or nurturance, but rather upon
this state of enclosure. She points out (after Gillison 1980) that among the Gimi
of the Eastern Highlands infants are believed to be constituted by semen alone,
and so the mother grows the fetus by her act of incubation, by containing
something distinct and unseen (1988: 239). Growth is here a covert act. Losche
(1995) notes the generative potential of certain shapes in the painting tradition of
the Abelam people of the Sepik region. She states that these shapes share a name
with the term for womb and net bag, and that together they are distinguished for
their ability to disguise or envelop. They are said to act as 'a container whose
inside is invisible but from within which objects seem to be intrinsically
produced' (1995: 54). Mackenzie (1990: 101) observes a similar theme among
the Telefol speakers of the Mountain-Ok region. They draw an analogy between
men's houses, string bags and wombs - all three said to produce or grow the
items which they contain and subsequently release (1990).
Bomana too hides men, renders them unseen. A remand inmate from Pityilu
Island in Manus Province equated incarcerationwith the experience of a grieving
spouse. In his village this person is confined for three to six months in a small
house raised off the ground. The mourning spouse, he states, lives just like a
prisoner: is restricted in movement, hidden away and prevented from walking
around in view of those outside. Both are distinguished by their absence from
public gaze. Inmates from those regions with ceremonial men's houses
sometimes draw a different analogy.A convict from Baimuru, a coastal region of
Gulf Province, asserted that Bomana reminded him of stories he had heard about
the ceremonial house that used to stand near his home. At a certain age young
men were taken from the village and placed inside a dark, windowless building.
Here they remained for over a month, lost in shadows so thick that nothing
could be seen. Only the voices of the old men who accompanied them broke the
silence. In this ceremonial house, he explained, boys were prevented from
viewing the sun, from setting eyes on their parents and siblings. Once again it is
the darkness wrought by separation which motivates the equation.
Anthropologists who write about ceremonial men's houses draw attention to
the absence which this architecture creates. Meggitt (1964: 210), for instance,
states that the bachelor ritual among the Mae Enga, which takes young men from
their Highland villages and isolates them in a remote place in the forest, is known
as sanggai or 'that which is hidden'. Value is placed on disguise and acts of
concealment;2 the very opposite of what Foucault describes as the modern drive
to presence, to making everything visible and therefore graspable. In fact,

This content downloaded from 129.199.59.249 on Sat, 28 Mar 2015 20:37:50 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

ADAMREED

48

without absence nothing could grow. Biersack (1982: 248-9) states that among
the Paiela of the Eastern Highlands growth is precisely conceived as a consequence of the cutting of relations between observer and observed. Here men
need to go away, or make themselves unseen, in order to be recognized as
changed.
In Bomana, as in men's ceremonial houses, this absence is often figured along
gendered lines, as a separation between men and women, for it is only as 'men'
that prisoners are considered to grow their bodies. In drawing comparisons with
the ceremonial house, inmates tend to emphasize that ritual takes boys away
from their mothers and isolates them with other young men in a 'place set apart'.
Here an obstacle prevents men and women from viewing each other. Bomana,
like the ceremonial house, is said to be a 'place ofjust men' (piesblongman tasol).
Inmates sometimes welcome new prisoners with the reassurance that outside
'we used to live with our mothers, but now we will live by ourselves'.
Disconnexion therefore distinguishes a gendered state which allows them to
expand.
The cutting of relations also permits prisoners to anticipate a return or release,
their future reception outside. It is this judgement, the looked-for gaze ofAfamily
and friends, which is held to effect growth. Men at Bomana state that people
outside express surprise at their swollen bodies, that often after release the
discharged prisoner is unrecognized. His return is met with cries of disbelief:
'that is not your first body, it is a second body!' (em i nopas skin blongyou, em sekon
skin). Long-term convicts themselves identify the constantly changing form of
the recidivist. They observe that upon release he appears fat and healthy, but
upon return weak and thin again. Even those returning from the maximum
security institution, who announce 'I have been underground and now come
back', are met with careful scrutiny by inmates in the main compounds. At a
welcoming party friends share out tobacco and discuss the prisoner's growth (or
lack of it). Men therefore make their statements and act with this future gaze in
mind. Indeed, Strathern (1988: 280) suggests that growth is retrospective in
character:'It is in anticipation of the separation of grown thing from grower that
the thing so grows, for it is only known to have done so after the event'.
Incarceration, that moment of exile or concealment, exists as a generative form
in the anticipation of return.
An alternativevision
The darkness which inmates imagine thrown by the prison fence is a consequence of disconnexion, of revealed absence. These shadows are distressing, but
at the same time acknowledged as allowing other forms to emerge. Such growth
inspires prisoners to create their own omissions, to act themselves to block or
deny certain gazes. Their actions assume a specific mode of vision.
On the day of the final of the soccer competition two rival teams spend the
morning constructing separate enclosures from bamboo and coconut fronds.
Once completed, players and supporters encamp inside their respective
dwellings. There they prepare sandwiches, huddle into corners to chat and
smoke, and devote their attentions to the decoration of a team poster. As the hour
for the game approaches other prisoners are allowed out of the compounds. They
walk down to the playing field, seek the shade of a rain tree and sit down. The

This content downloaded from 129.199.59.249 on Sat, 28 Mar 2015 20:37:50 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

ADAM REED

49

two teams remain hidden from view, concealed inside their enclosures. These
structures draw the crowd's attention; anticipation builds. A few minutes before
kick-off the posters, now attached to a tall wooden frame and embroidered with
streamers in team colours, are ceremonially planted on the touchline outside the
entrance to each enclosure. Shouts are heard from within, gradually increasing in
volume, and then the teams suddenly appear. They burst through the posterboard and run onto the pitch, arms and legs tied with paper streamers. The
crowd cheers as the players throw them gifts of potato crisps and boiled sweets.
Both teams return to their enclosures, remove decorations and settle their minds
on the game. When they emerge once again, they do so as a football team: in line
and at an orderly pace. The whistle blows and play begins. Here, then, is an
example of what absence achieves. These enclosures, which sever relations
between prisoners, make the two teams plausible and give them strength. It is as
if competition requires certain gazes to be momentarily screened.
The organization of cells betrays a similar concern to regulate gazing. These
buildings hold men from different provinces and gangs. As a consequence unity
is not easily revealed. Indeed, the cell is usually transformed into elaborate spatial
divisions, each throwing its own shadows. From the door all that can be seen is a
long narrow corridor leading to a bathroom at the opposite end. On inspection
this passageway is shown to be a hall of blankets, hung in series along wires above
the head. Other wires and blankets lead off from them across the cell to the
barred ventilation windows that run along the cement walls. This creates a
number of enclosed spaces or 'cubes'. These, inmates stipulate, cannot be
entered without permission; activities inside remain private. The cube is distinguished as dark and hidden, sometimes known as 'our little fence' (liklik banis
blongmipela). Like the prison fence, these cubes cut relations. Those who retire
inside make themselves absent, become unseen in the eyes of cell mates. A cube
is usually shared by language mates or those in the same gang, but any relation
may be thus distinguished; for instance, those from the same urban neighbourhood, the same church or work party.Their withdrawal gives form to that
relation, encourages others to anticipate their return as a unit.
Cubes not only set apart certain relations, they also provide inmates with an
opportunity to escape undesirable gazes. Most obviously they break the supervision of warders. Men state that inside their cubes they are free to ignore prison
rules. The darkness protects them from observation. It allows cube mates to
smoke tobacco and marijuana, to cook any rice or tinned food they might have
stolen from the mess, to interrogate, beat or sexually assault new prisoners and
to discuss in secret plans for future robberies.
But the cube is perhaps more significant for the gazes it interrupts between
prisoners. Men make cubes because they do not wish to view or be viewed by
their cell mates. They state that no one wants to live 'fact to face', for to see
another face is to provoke a response or invite a particular obligation. Inmates
complain that in Bomana they do not have the resources to meet these commitments; that, for instance, they only have enough tobacco to share among
language mates. To exchange gazes is therefore to acknowledge a relation, and
thus be compelled to act on its basis. Not all responses are cordial; prisoners also
point out that a cell without cubes might provoke petty jealousies and theft or,
more seriously, fights between enemy gangs. While cell mates remain hidden and
out of the eye of each other, the chances of confrontation are much reduced. It is

This content downloaded from 129.199.59.249 on Sat, 28 Mar 2015 20:37:50 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

50

ADAMREED

for this reason that the prison director and his warders tolerate the presence of
cubes; in fact they treat the cube as a privilege, one which might be taken away if
inmates misbehave (several times during my research those in remand cells had
their blankets removed as punishment for unravelling wires from the compound
fence). Warders appreciate the problems of a more transparent regime.
Gazes, then, do not appear to objectify or fix individuals in the manner
expected of a subject-object relationship. Rather, there seems to be a certain
reciprocity in vision, a mutual gazing which motivates and orientates action. The
cube, by breaking this visual relation, releases participantsfrom their supervisory
role and obligation to each other.
This example is in sympathy with the model Strathern presents of Melanesian
agency. Implicit within this model is a notion of intersubjective gazing. She
argues that an agent acts by considering a relationship from two perspectives:
from one's own and from another point of view (Strathern 1988: 271). Every act
reveals an individual, but at the same time is motivated by a concern to anticipate
and meet the expectations of someone else's regard. In any relation there is an
imagined reciprocity of gazes, with each person perceived as the cause of the
other's agency (1988: 300). Strathern suggests that in this sense an audience, or
viewing Other, may be considered to 'coerce' the action they witness (1988: 297).
Instead of a relation between subject and object, one therefore has a relation
between two subjects, who each act with the other in mind (1988: 274). She
explains that 'theagentactsin theknowledgeof his or herown constitutionas a personin
theregardof othersand indeed fabricatesthat regard (objectifying her or himself) in
activating the relationship' (1988: 275).
It is upon this point - the idea that self is the consequence of external regard that Weiner suggests a link with what he wants to call a Lacanian anthropology.
Weiner remains impressed by the symmetry between Strathern's relationallycomposed person and Lacan'sargument that an infant at first perceives an undifferentiated world. He points out that according to Lacan an infant only develops
a sense of self through vision, through witnessing a reflection in the mirror or the
delimited responses and gestures of others (Weiner 1995: 4, 19). Here subjectivity is also a consequence of prior connexion, of an original intersubjectivity
(1995: 12-13). Weiner states that both Lacan and Strathern imagine the subject to
be the result of an act of differentiation (1995: 15) and that this act relies on
powers of visual perception (for Lacan of course vision and reflection provide
only the first image of self; it is later substantiated through speech and language).
The subject is never outside specific relations, never beyond the coercive regard
of someone else.
The vision that Strathern and Weiner present bears comparison with those
alternatives set up in philosophy to subvert what is considered a modern gaze.
Levin (1988: 440), for instance, contrasts an 'assertoric gaze', which establishes a
narrow opposition between observer and observed, with an 'aletheic gaze'. The
latter suggests, after Heidegger, an 'intertwining of gazes', a sense of wholeness
or connectedness, which might undermine an objectifying vision (1988: 21011). Levin explains that here 'the seer is seen and sees himself as seen, seen
through what he sees. The seer can feel his seeing as it is felt, or received, by the
other, the one who he sees. The seer and the other as seen belong to the same
flesh ... two seers, seeing one another, cannot avoid an involuntary, organismic
acknowledgement of their primordial kinship' (1988: 333). Such a description

This content downloaded from 129.199.59.249 on Sat, 28 Mar 2015 20:37:50 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

ADAM REED

51

seems fanciful, but Levin is keen to emphasize that he is not advocating a return
to some kind of original unity (1988: 211). Rather the aletheic gaze he proposes
is intended to stimulate, to cause others to rethink the limits of their vision.
The notion of intersubjective gazing places the experience of incarceration
into an interesting light. Prisoners at Bomana often remark that they ask parents
and wives to visit only periodically, for the sight of their faces is said to inspire
pain and anxiety, to remind inmates of those obligation which they are unable to
meet. In order to prevent worries mounting, inmates emphasize the importance
of keeping busy. Those who think too hard about absent relations are said to risk
insanity or to be driven to escape (during the first ten months of 1995, for
example, a total of forty-five inmates escaped from Bomana). Fugitives, prisoners
insist, never run away on a whim. They flee because the faces of people they
know outside continue to haunt them; escapes are always a consequence of anticipating specific gazes. The same anxieties are reported to affect the friends and
family of prisoners. Inmates often state that parents sicken or die as a result of
thinking too long on a lost son. Sometimes kin are said to mourn for an arrested
relative as if that man had truly died. Prisoners, although they bemoan the loss of
certain relations, realise that it is important for the health of all concerned to try
to forget those ties which cannot be satisfied.
This desire to forget is especially strong among long-term convicts. They
argue that since they have no prospect of immediate release, it is far better to
disregard relations with those outside and instead focus attention upon those
gazes which can be met. Long-term convicts invest far more energy in ties with
other prisoners; they are held to become the 'fathers/owners of the fence' (papa
blongbanis). By contrast, those close to discharge are said to be concerned with
ties outside, with the reception they will receive upon release. Remand inmates,
who always remain hopeful ofvictory in court, display even less interest in prison
events; as a consequence they are distinguished as an 'outside group' (autsaitlain).
These prisoners are able to contemplate, without risk, the gaze of family and
friends. Long-term convicts resent their freedom and complain when they speak
too openly of outside ties. Such talk makes it harder for them to forget.
This mode of vision, which always anticipates the regard of another, coerces
action. It compels people to acknowledge certain obligations and responses.
Outside, young men who wish to evade these responsibilities (the obligation to
marry, for instance) often migrate to the city, to a place where they become
unseen and the faces which might inspire onerous commitments can be
forgotten.3 These migrants are fugitives from images of themselves. In Bomana
the fence severs relations and therefore blocks gazes which might otherwise
inform action. Incarceration also edits images, the products of specific ties, and
allows alternative exchanges to occur. Each subject continues to act in
complement, motivated by what they take to be someone else's gaze. But what
happens when a gaze cannot be returned?
Envisioning God
The work of Strathern, like that of Levin and other philosophers who aim to
place a limit on the spectatorial subject, helps draw out the significance of intersubjective gazing among prisoners at Bomana. But at the same time it risks
obscuring those visual themes that contradict, or at least differ from, the model

This content downloaded from 129.199.59.249 on Sat, 28 Mar 2015 20:37:50 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

52

ADAMREED

of agency she suggests. Prisoners state that Bomana provides a space, free from
the ties and distractions of life outside, in which they can better consider their
relation to God. Indeed, many claim to undergo conversion experiences. These
provide tools for a different subjectivity, one that draws on quite separate notions
of vision.
Prisoners observe that God can see everything. They argue that it is futile and
dangerous to try to evade this divine gaze. Christians may offer prayer and
worship in order to effect a favourable intervention, but this does not assume that
God can be coerced into action. There is no intertwining of gazes, no return of
vision. Although God views them, inmates cannot see God. Action is therefore
not provoked in the same manner as other intersubjective relations. Christians
act in anticipation of a divine gaze, but they do not really expect to compel
responses from God. This fact is epitomized in attitudes to conversion. Prisoners
regularly state that it is not up to them to convert. Only God, they insist, can
make such a decision. Those who claim to change on their own volition are
regarded with suspicion, held to worship for convenience (to impress warders,
for instance) and believed to fall back inevitably into crime upon their release.
Inmates argue that it is almost better to continue stealing, and wait to be called,
than to pretend self-authored conversion is possible. They assert that everyone
immediately knows when God is truly calling them. One moment a man might
be stealing, but at the next instance he might declare 'forget it, I must now
worship' (maski, mi lotu). In this relation there is little reciprocity, for only one
partner may view the other.
As a mode of vision this relation is not equivalent to the assertoric gaze that,
Levin suggests, informs modern knowledge practice. Although God is held to
view everything, people themselves are not believed to possess such an objectifying capacity. They do not place a distance between each other in the manner
imagined between an observing subject and object. By way of elucidation, I offer
what might be considered an analogous discontinuity. Levin (1988: 111-15), in
his attempt to disrupt the hegemony of a non-reciprocal, objectifying gaze, draws
inspiration from the art historianJean Paris. He reports a discontinuity, suggested
by Paris (1975), between the vision exemplified in Renaissance painting and that
shown in Byzantine mosaics. In the latter God is depicted against a flat surface,
without depth, looking straight ahead. But Paris argues that here depth is not
absent, it is just relocated. He claims that the space of the picture is projected
forward, to converge upon the viewer. God fixes a stare, thus making the viewer
the object of vision. Byzantine culture regarded God as invisible, as immune to
representation; what is considered in its mosaics is therefore a world imagined
from the perspective of God. Paris contrasts this vision with the emergence
during the Renaissance of paintings which portray the Holy mother and child in
linear perspective. Here depth belongs to the picture itself, which frames the
couple in front of a receding horizon. For the first time these divine figures are
represented looking away at diverse angles: the child, for instance, focusing on an
object of play and the mother at a point to her right. They have become objects
of a gaze, and the viewers, or unseen audience, are now 'voyeurs' (1975: 62).
I am suggesting that prisoners in Bomana conceive their relation to God in a
manner equivalent to that Byzantine conception described by Paris. Both depict
an inclusive tie, which forbids the distance between God and humans opened by
linear perspective. Both anticipate a divine gaze which illuminates the world and

This content downloaded from 129.199.59.249 on Sat, 28 Mar 2015 20:37:50 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

ADAM REED

53

makes everyone visible. Both reject the objectification of God and render the
Holy countenance invisible. While Christians might act in anticipation of a gaze
which fixes their unity, this must not be returned.
The vision that reflection upon God inspires values light more positively.
Christians at Bomana reject the practice of making cubes. They argue that the act
of hanging blankets is divisive, responsible for separating cell mates, causing
fights and quarrels, as well as providing cover for illicit activities. Christians
regard cubes as 'dark rooms', spaces whose shadows carry the negative connotation of ignorance and evil. In the two convict cells where Christians predominate, cubes are accordingly absent. These cells are distinguished as 'open places'
(pies klia), where men are prevented from hiding from each other. Cell mates
explain that they live in an open place because they wish to worship, share food
and tell stories together. Here, they claim, dealings are safe: 'you can see and as a
result others cannot harm you' (longpies klia yu kan lukim na oi no kan bagarapim
man). This clearing is regarded as most appropriate for Christian living (even
convicts in other cells lift their blankets during evening prayers), analogous to the
light which God provides to illuminate the world. From a divine perspective
everyone is individual and as such can afford to live face-to-face.
The Christian sympathy for light at times appears close to the panoptic ideal
described by Foucault. But whereas the architecture of surveillance is said to
encourage individuals themselves to adopt an assertoric gaze, hcre only God,
who remains absent, holds the capacity to render individuals visible. This
lucidity depends on a divine perspective. Nevertheless the desire for light makes
certain penal ceremonies attractive.
As soon as prisoners are released from their cells in the morning, they reluctantly make their way to the parade ground for roll call. There warders organize
them into lines, according to cell membership, and call out their names in alphabetical order. Every prisoner is expected to affirm his presence by responding 'yes
sir'. The warder who masters the roll confirms each response by placing a heavy
tick next to the name concerned. Once everyone is accounted for, the men can
return to their compounds. This procedure is repeated in the afternoon, just
before evening lock-up.
Prisoners themselves usually seem loth to mimic such an accounting practice.
Ties between language or gang mates are not enumerated in this manner. Indeed,
requests to calculate membership are met with exasperation. If a number is
offered, it is clearly arbitrary.These relations are inclusive in character and not
regarded as groups which might be taken apart by counting out individual
members. Each relation appears singular and undifferentiated.
But as Christians, prisoners are interested in ceremonies of enumeration. The
Seventh Day Adventists, who are by far the most successful evangelizing church
in Bomana, begin every Saturday service with their own roll call. They stress the
importance of recording attendance. Here enumeration is taken as a ritual which
anticipates the divine gaze. God is held to view the members of the congregation
independently of each other, as individuals. Rolls of attendance celebrate this
perspective. The same expectations inform an interest in cleanliness, in keeping
the body, made visible by God, washed and healthy. Christians assert that God
regards the body as a discrete container, a vessel or 'house' suitable for the Holy
Spirit to inhabit - hence the energy invested in maintaining a neat and tidy
appearance. But their behaviour does not correspond with a modern subjectivity,

This content downloaded from 129.199.59.249 on Sat, 28 Mar 2015 20:37:50 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

ADAM REED

54

which assumes individuals are sovereign, exclusive authors of action. Instead,

Christians regard their acts as coerced, the product of a relation to God.
Individuals are only anticipated by first considering this divine gaze.
Conclusion
The relation which prisoners recognize to God, and the vision this tie allows,
inspires their reading of terms such as 'law' and 'custom'. Just as God remains
invisible and thus not susceptible to human influence, so these terms are treated
as absent figures whose gaze nevertheless effects certain actions.
One convict explained the parallel in a novel way. He argued that the Bible,
government law and custom each reflected behaviour, acted as 'mirrors' to the
individual. Just as a prisoner sees his face in a looking glass and can recognize
whether he is clean or dirty, so these bodies of rules are held to provide an
impression of certain standards of conduct. The prisoner, by considering his
reflection (anticipating the gaze of God, law or custom), may judge his actions
and change accordingly. These mirrors make visible an individual and his
relation to each reflecting surface. But, the convict warned, if people ignore their
reflection they risk injury. Someone who transgresses custom may suffer ill
health or misfortune, or become victim to sorcery. Someone who breaks the
rules of the Bible may experience, now or after death, the wrath of God.
Someone who abandons the law of government and starts to steal may be
arrested and sent to prison or shot by the police.
Of these, the law of government, which includes discipline in prison, is held
to provide the most immediate reflection. In Bomana, the convict stated,
judgment for misbehaviour and its punishment are always swift. This contrasts
with the more circuitous chastizements of custom and God. All, however, offer
a gaze which objectifies persons and treats them as individual. Yet none transforms them into the kind of subject that Foucault imagines appearing in lateeighteenth-century Europe and America. The prisoner remains caught in a
relation, and cannot be imagined outside his tie to God, custom or law. His action
is still compelled by anticipating their regard.
Against the assertoric gaze which Levin rejects as eliminating the connexion
between seer and seen, prisoners at Bomana appearto offer two modes of vision,
both of which retain a sense of intersubjectivity. In the first, gazes intertwine, so
that subjects act in expectation of each other's regard. Here an aesthetic of
concealment or darkness exists, which allows specific forms to emerge or grow.
This aesthetic involves severing the tie between subjects, hiding one from
another, in order to ensure that a change can be registered when these gazing
subjects return. In the second mode a connexion between observer and observed
is still assumed, but this time gazes are not exchanged. One side of the relation
(God, law, custom) remains obscured, unseen by its partner.It throws light upon
the latter, illuminating individuals who are unable to grasp or reciprocate this
gaze. Rather than valorizing shadows, the second mode of vision aims to create a
clearing, to absolve divisions by appealing to an absent figure's perspective.
Understanding both modes ofvision may allow one to reconstruct (in a provisional sense) the kind of exegeses available to prisoners and other urban Papua
New Guineans. Explanations of criminal behaviour, for instance, may borrow
from either vision. The criminal may be represented as someone who evades the

This content downloaded from 129.199.59.249 on Sat, 28 Mar 2015 20:37:50 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

ADAM REED

55

gaze of God and the reflection provided by government law and custom. Here a
thief is portrayed as a night owl, someone who operates in darkness and wanders
the city streets without concern for his reflection. By contrast, others may
represent the thief as a casualty of social ties, whose obligations compel him to
steal (of course, a commitment to certain relations may do the reverse, and may
prevent him from getting into trouble). Here the anticipated gaze of gang or
language mates coerces criminal behaviour, keeps young men breaking the law.
This is but one example of what an oscillating vision might admit.
NOTES
I am grateful for the comments and criticisms of Peter Fitzpatrick, Eric Hirsch, Annelise Riles,
Marilyn Strathern and Karen Sykes. Fieldwork was carried out at Bomana prison, Port Moresby,
between October 1994 and November 1995. I wish to thank the Correctional Institution Service
for granting me permission to conduct research and, most importantly, those prisoners and warders
who took the time to sit down and talk with me. Finally, my thanks go to the Cambridge
Commonwealth Trust, the Royal Anthropological Institute, the Smuts Memorial Fund and the
William Wyse Fund for providing the financial means to allow me to carry out the research on
which this article is based.
I There are also women at Bomana, but they are held in a separate facility beyond the perimeter
fence and out of sight of male prisoners. Female inmates number no more than twenty, and have
very little communication with the men. My research concentrated on male prisoners and life
inside the perimeter fence. This article is therefore concerned exclusively with the experiences of
men at Bomana.
2 A note of caution should be added here. The notion of concealment is not just a visual
metaphor. Gell (1995: 238) advises that among the Umeda, to be 'hidden' is primarily an auditory
concept. In the dense forest the Umeda inhabit, many things are visually obscured, so presence is
determined by sound. Gell argues that in such an environment absence is better connected with
silence than with lack of vision.
I Strathern (1975) notes that Hagen migrants to Port Moresby in the 1970s received visitors
from home with an equivocal attitude. The sight of cousins, siblings or parents is said to have
reminded them of the relational obligations they were avoiding by remaining in the city. This
avoidance, in contrast to prison, is voluntary and deliberate. People, then, may wish to forget gazes
which require an arduous or tiresome response.
REFERENCES
Biersack, A. 1982. Ginger gardens for the Ginger Woman: rites and passages in a Melanesian
society. Man (N.S.) 17, 239-58.
Certeau de, M. 1986. Heterologies:
on theOther.Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.
discourse
Feld, S. 1982. Soundandsentiment:
birds,weeping,poeticsandsongin Kaluliexpression.
Philadelphia:
Univ. of Pennsylvania Press.
andthehegemony
Flynn, T. 1993. Foucault and the eclipse of vision. In Modernity
of vision(ed.) D.
Levin. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
andpunish:thebirthoftheprison.London: Penguin.
Foucault, M. 1977. Discipline
1980. Power/knowledge:
selected
interviews
andotherwritings1972-1977.New York: Pantheon.
Gell, A. 1995. The language of the forest: landscape and phonological iconism in Umeda. In The
on placeandspace(eds) E. Hirsch & M. O'Hanlon. Oxford:
anthropology
of landscape:
perspectives
Clarendon Press.
Gillison, G. 1980. Images of nature in Gimi thought. In Nature,cultureand gender(eds) C.
MacCormack & M. Strathern. Cambridge: Univ. Press.
Frenchthought.
Jay, M. 1993. Downcast
eyes:thedenigration
of visionin twentieth
century
Berkeley: Univ.
of California Press.
situation.New York: Routledge.
Levin, D. 1988. Theopening
of vision:nihilismandthepostmodern
- 1997. Keeping Foucault and Derrida in sight: panopticism and the politics of subversion.
In Sites of vision:the discursive
construction
of sight in the historyof philosophy(ed.) D. Levin.

This content downloaded from 129.199.59.249 on Sat, 28 Mar 2015 20:37:50 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

ADAM REED

56

Cambridge,MA: MIT Press.

Losche,D. 1995. The Sepik gaze: iconographicinterpretationsof Abelamform. SocialAnalysis3,
47-60.
Mackenzie,M. 1990.The Telefolstringbag:a culturalobjectwith androgynousforms.In Children
andchangeamongtheMountain-Okof CentralNew Guinea(eds) B. Craig& D.
of Afek:tradition
Hyndman.Sydney:OceaniaMonographs40.
Meggitt, M. 1964. Male-femalerelationshipsin the Highlandsof AustralianNew Guinea.Am.
Anthrop.66, 204-24.
Egypt.Berkeley:Univ. of CaliforniaPress.
Mitchell,T. 1988. Colonising
Pittsburgh:Carnegie-MellonUniversity.
Paris,J. 1975.Paintingandlinguistics.
in PortMoresby(New GuineaRes. Bull.
Strathern,M. 1975. No moneyon ourskins:Hagenmigrants
61). Canberra:AustralianNationalUniversity.
Berkeley:
inMelanesia.
withsociety
withwomenandproblems
problems
1988. Thegenderofthegtft:
Univ. of CaliforniaPress.
(ASAOspec. Publ. 3). Savage,Maryland:Rowman& Littlefield.
1991.Partialconnections
Manchester:
technologies.
kinshipandnewreproductive
1992.Reproducing
anthropology,
thefuture:
Univ. Press.
andscale.Cambridge:PricklyPearPress.
issuesin complexity
1995. 7he relation:
Weiner,J. 1995. Thelostdrum:themythofsexualityin PapuaNew Guineaandbeyond.Madison:Univ.
of WisconsinPress.

Des individus qui anticipent:modes visuels et consequencessociales

dans le contexte carceralen PapouasieNouvelle Guin6e
Resume
Cet article explore les exp6riences visuelles des prisonniers d6tenus i Bomana en Papouasie,
Nouvelle Guinee. L'auteur examine ce que les prisonniers consid&rent comme 'tant les
capacites limites visuelles de l'incarc6ration. Foucault d6crit le role des technologies p6nales de
surveillance dans le d6veloppement de la subjectivit6 moderne en Europe et en Am6rique du
Nord. Mais les prisonniers de Bonama diff6rencient plusieurs modes visuels, chacun avec des
cons6quences distinctes, que l'auteur explore en s'appuyant sur les travaux de Strathern et de
Levin. II montre que si les prisonniers privil6gient une esth6tique de l'obscurit6 et de la
dissimulation, celle-ci n'exclut pas une esth6tique de l'absolution et de la lumiere divine, qui
peuvent toutes deux etre rattach6es au lien entre celui qui voit et ce qui est vu. En conclusion,
l'objectif de cet article est d'6largir notre compr6hension de la socialit6 m6lan6sienne a partir des
possibilites offertes par les phenomenes de vision.

CB3 9AJ. aderlOO@hermes.cam.ac.uk

N8, Memorial
Court,ClareCollege,Cambridge

This content downloaded from 129.199.59.249 on Sat, 28 Mar 2015 20:37:50 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions