Abstract
This chapter focuses on the material regime. We explore aspects of the rape courtroom assemblage which include various embodied practices and performances. Through this, we can map the significance placed on the ability of the body to affect and be affected and consider how this impacted barristers’ perspectives on, and utilisation of, measures which have been brought in to improve the courtroom experience for rape victims. We also map, and make visible, various courtroom tactics and practices and see how these are influenced by key attractors and involve drawing a plane of composition and engaging in techniques of affect. Whilst affects and the material regime will be our primary focus, given the interconnected reality of the theory, this will also involve issues of territory and intensive sense.
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Notes
- 1.
For a detailed analysis of the use and issues with remote testimony/courtroom participation in Australia, and suggestions for reform, see Rowden et al. 2013.
- 2.
However, as Ellison and Munro (2013) note, a limitation of their research is that the complainant delivered the testimony with the same emotional state, regardless of the mode of delivery, and it is the emotional salience of the testimony that barristers perceive to have affectual force.
- 3.
However, we recognise that it is not possible to deduce from the data whether the ability and willingness to self-sensor in this way played a role in her testimony coming to constitute compelling.
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Carline, A., Gunby, C., Murray, J. (2020). Courtroom Performances: Drama, but not Representational Drama. In: Rape and the Criminal Trial. Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38684-9_4
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