The tutelary architecture of immigration detention prisons and the spectacle of 'necessary suffering'

In this essay, I address Debord's concept of the spectalist society in the context of the transmutation of the trauma of the refugees incarcerated in Australia's immigration prisons into telegenic spectacle. I argue that the razor wire fences of these prisons generate a double movement of both enclosure and exposure. The potential for exposure is what enables refugee trauma to be telegenically transmitted as spectacle. The architecture of Australia's immigration prisons, I conclude, functions as a type of tutelary architecture that dispenses object lessons on deterrence whilst simultaneously generating the production of refugee trauma-as-spectacle.