Aretxaga B
University of Texas-Austin, USA.
Cult Med Psychiatry. 2001 Mar;25(1):1-27. doi: 10.1023/a:1005630716511.
This article analyzes the practice of strip searching women political prisoners in Northern Ireland as a violent technology of control aimed at breaking the political identity of prisoners. Focusing on a controversial case of a mass strip search carried out in 1992, the article examines the phantasmatic investements pervading this seemingly rational technology of control. Using a psychoanalytic notion of fantasy against the backdrop of a Foucaultian theory of power, this article argues that strip searches constitute a gendered form of political domination driven by, and performed within, a phantasmatic scenario of sexual violence. In this scenario both the political and gender identities of prisoners are re-inscribed with the power of a state acting as a male body politic. The article argues that the phantasmatic support of rational technologies of control betrays the contingent and shifting character of domination as well as its ambiguous effects.
本文分析了在北爱尔兰对女性政治犯进行裸身搜查的做法，这是一种旨在打破囚犯政治身份的暴力控制手段。本文聚焦于1992年进行的一次有争议的大规模裸身搜查事件，审视了弥漫于这种看似理性的控制手段中的幻想性投入。本文以福柯的权力理论为背景，运用精神分析的幻想概念，认为裸身搜查构成了一种性别化的政治统治形式，它由性暴力的幻想场景驱动，并在其中得以实施。在这个场景中，囚犯的政治身份和性别身份都被作为男性政治实体的国家权力重新铭刻。本文认为，对理性控制手段的幻想性支持暴露了统治的偶然性和变化性及其模糊影响。
