19 min
1. Dr Sophie Fuggle Podcasts from the bagne
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- History
The podcast where we discuss disease, contagion, confinement and isolation in France’s overseas penal colonies. This podcast is part of the Postcards from the bagne research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/R002452/1). Have a look at our project blog, follow us on Instagram and Twitter.
Dr Sophie Fuggle is Associate Professor in Postcolonial Studies and Cultural Heritage at Nottingham Trent University. She is an AHRC Early Career Leadership Fellow and her current research specialises in recent and contemporary continental philosophy, ecocriticism and representations of incarceration. In January 2018, she was awarded funding for this project looking at multisite carceral heritage in French Guiana and New Caledonia. Sophie is also working on a monograph entitled This is not a camp: The Suicide Window at the Camp des Milles memorial. The book explores the possibilities and limitations for ethical spectatorship amongst visitors to sites such as the recently inaugurated Camp des Milles memorial museum located in a former tile factory turned deportation camp in the town of Les Milles just outside Aix-en-Provence.
French Guiana is a French Overseas territory in the Pacific that was used as a penal colony by the French between 1852 and 1938. During this period, 70,000 convicts were transported to the bagne in French Guiana which finally closed in 1946. In this episode, Sophie focuses on a letter she discovered in the archives during fieldwork last year. The letter is from a libéré who suffers from leprosy and is quarantined on an island. From this correspondence, Sophie elicits important questions about the role of the witness during periods of disease and contagion, both in the penal colony and now, during this global pandemic. She points out that some of those most badly affected are perhaps the least able to provide us with their testimonies.
Sophie is on Twitter @fuggbug.
The podcast where we discuss disease, contagion, confinement and isolation in France’s overseas penal colonies. This podcast is part of the Postcards from the bagne research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/R002452/1). Have a look at our project blog, follow us on Instagram and Twitter.
Dr Sophie Fuggle is Associate Professor in Postcolonial Studies and Cultural Heritage at Nottingham Trent University. She is an AHRC Early Career Leadership Fellow and her current research specialises in recent and contemporary continental philosophy, ecocriticism and representations of incarceration. In January 2018, she was awarded funding for this project looking at multisite carceral heritage in French Guiana and New Caledonia. Sophie is also working on a monograph entitled This is not a camp: The Suicide Window at the Camp des Milles memorial. The book explores the possibilities and limitations for ethical spectatorship amongst visitors to sites such as the recently inaugurated Camp des Milles memorial museum located in a former tile factory turned deportation camp in the town of Les Milles just outside Aix-en-Provence.
French Guiana is a French Overseas territory in the Pacific that was used as a penal colony by the French between 1852 and 1938. During this period, 70,000 convicts were transported to the bagne in French Guiana which finally closed in 1946. In this episode, Sophie focuses on a letter she discovered in the archives during fieldwork last year. The letter is from a libéré who suffers from leprosy and is quarantined on an island. From this correspondence, Sophie elicits important questions about the role of the witness during periods of disease and contagion, both in the penal colony and now, during this global pandemic. She points out that some of those most badly affected are perhaps the least able to provide us with their testimonies.
Sophie is on Twitter @fuggbug.
19 min