Possessed

Possessed: A Reoccurring Legal Hysteria (after Manderson), screenprint, 2018, 76x37cm

Possessed: A Method of Social Control (after Manderson), screenprint, 2018, 76x37cm

These two screen printed works, A Reoccuring Legal Hysteria and A Method of Social Control, aim to visualise the ideas presented in Desmond Manderson’s ‘Possessed: Drug policy, witchcraft and belief’. In this paper, Manderson argues that such hysteria as witch hunts and the war on drugs act as substitutes for justice in the eyes of law makers. In this sense, the individuals subjected to the penalties of these laws are more accurately victims of a social anxiety that shifts across minority groups than intentional committers of wrongful acts.

Mirroring the historical comparison in the text, the woman at the stake and the man in handcuffs are posed facing towards each other, barefooted and unable to act. The fire and police lights engulf each body, representing both the means of law enforcement and punishment. A sentence taken from Manderson’s paper is repeated behind the figures’ heads; ‘We are not doing this to human beings, said the Inquisition; we are doing  this only to the demons that have corrupted them’.

Manderson, Desmond. "Possessed: Drug Policy, Witchcraft and Belief." Cultural Studies 19, no. 1 (2005): 35-62.

Photographs: Rory Gillen