Michel Foucault
THE POLITICS OF CRIME
Int:
Guard towers, barbed-wire fences, police dogs, prisoners transported in
trucks like so many animals.. .. When the first fllmed reports of life in a
Soviet detention camp to reach the West were shown on French television,
these were some of the scenes witnessed by viewers-scenes all too
characteristic of our century. Soviet spokesmen at first denied the film 's
authenticity. Later admitting the existence of the camp in question, they
added, by way of justification, that only nonpolitical prisoners were
in–
terned there . The response of the French public was on the whole one of
relief: "Oh well, since they're only common criminals. . .. " What were
your reactions
to
the fllm and to the responses it elicited?
Foucault:
One early statement on the part of Soviet authorities impressed
me enormously. They claimed that the very existence of the camp in plain
view in the middle of a city proved that there was nothing shocking about
it. As though the fact that a concentration camp could exist undisguised
in the middle of Riga constituted an excuse. (The Germans, after all,
sometimes felt the need
to
hide their camps .) As though the shameless–
ness of not hiding from the people of Riga what they do in that city en–
titled the Soviet authorities to demand silence everywhere else and
to
en–
force their demand. It's the logic of Cyrano de Bergerac, cynicism as cen–
sorship: "You're not allowed to mention my nose because it's right in
the middle of my face ." As though it were possible not
to
see the Riga
camp for what it is, a symbol of shamelessly exercised power, just as we see
our own city halls, courts, and prisons as emblems on the escutcheon of
power.
Setting aside for a moment the question ofwhether its inmates are poli–
tical or nonpolitical prisoners, the camp's high visibility and the fear in–
herent in that visibility are in themselves political. Barbed wire, search–
light beams, and the echoing footsteps of prison guards-that is political.
And that is policy.
I was also struck by the Soviet rationalization you quoted : "These are
