Magnus Hörnqvist | Stockholm University (original) (raw)

Papers by Magnus Hörnqvist

European Journal of Criminology, Sep 1, 2016

The Pleasure of Punishment

British Journal of Criminology, 2012

Constellations, 2023

The objective of this article is to see whether desire for recognition might contain an emancipat... more The objective of this article is to see whether desire for recognition might contain an emancipatory aspect. Could this desire be a political ally? The argumentative strategy is to fully acknowledge the oppressive mechanisms at work before trying to find a way to other outcomes, including emancipation, with which desire for recognition has been associated in the tradition from Hegel. Through a re-interpretation of the master-and-slave dialectic, supplemented by sociological research on status expectations, I suggest a way out of the vicious circle, where desire produced by power finds satisfaction through a preexisting other, resulting in an endless dynamic of compulsive conformity and regressive assertion of status. The hold of this dynamic must not be underestimated, yet, as I argue, both desire and what satisfies desire are liable to change, through struggle. The transformation of the generalized other, which provides recognition, is seen to be a crucial feature of all collective struggle. The very source of recognition is transformed, behind the backs of the actors, in turn affecting their desire. This can but must not lead to the emancipatory outcomes which are traditionally tied to recognition in the Hegelian tradition.

Nordic Criminal Justice in a Global Context

This book critically investigates Nordic criminal justice as a global role model. Not taking this... more This book critically investigates Nordic criminal justice as a global role model. Not taking this role for granted, the chapters of the book analyze how Nordic approaches to criminal justice were folded into global contexts, and how patterns of promotion were built around perceptions that these approaches also had a particular value for other criminal justice systems. Specific actors, both internal and external to the region itself, have branded Nordic criminal justice as a form of 'penal exceptionalism' associated with human rights, universalistic welfare, and social cohesion. The book shows how building and using the brand of Nordic criminal justice allowed stakeholders to champion specific forms of crime control across a variety of criminal justice areas in both domestic and international settings. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of criminal justice, international law and justice, Nordic and Scandinavian studies, and more widely to the social sciences and humanities.

Nordisk Tidsskrift for Kriminalvidenskab, 2003

Stockholm University: Department of Criminology, 2001

CrimRxiv, 2021

Based on a reading of contemporary philosophical arguments, this book accounts for how punishment... more Based on a reading of contemporary philosophical arguments, this book accounts for how punishment has provided audiences with pleasure in different historical contexts. Watching tragedies, contemplating hell, attending executions, or imagining prisons have generated pleasure, according to contemporary observers, in ancient Greece, in medieval Catholic Europe, in the early-modern absolutist states, and in the post-1968 Western world. The pleasure was often judged morally problematic, and raised questions about which desires were satisfied, and what the enjoyment was like. This book offers a research synthesis that ties together existing work on the pleasure of punishment. It considers how the shared joys of punishment gradually disappeared from the public view at a precise historic conjuncture, and explores whether arguments about the carnivalesque character of cruelty can provide support for the continued existence of penal pleasure. Towards the end of this book, the reader will discover, if willing to go along and follow desire to places which are full of pain and suffering, that deeply entwined with the desire for punishment, there is also the desire for social justice. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, philosophy and all those interested in the pleasures of punishment. Contents Acknowledgements vi Introduction: articulating the problematic of desire 1 The disappearance of pleasure? 2 The impossible flight from passion 3 The ambiguous desire for recognition 4 The paradox of tragic pleasure 5 Two paradigms of enjoyment 6 Ressentiment: moral elevation through punishment 7 Obscene enjoyment: between power and prohibition Index This book has a long prehistory and I am grateful to all people who have offered input along the way, starting with David Scott, who, as the editor of the anthology "Why Prison?", encouraged me to think further on the Foucauldian idea of the productivity of power, and thus initially set me on this track. It became a chapter on the pleasure of punishment, specifically focused on the prison and the middle class. When Tom Sutton at Routledge asked me to write a book on the theme a few years ago at a criminology conference, the task first struck me as too daunting. I also needed much more time, more material and a wider scope. My colleagues at the department of criminology at Stockholm university have been a great support; especially thanks to Henrik Tham, Anders Nilsson and Janne Flyghed for useful comments on early drafts. Intelligibility has been the key challenge throughout, and they have reminded me of that. Being granted the RJ Sabbatical 2018, by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (SAB18-0161:1), to write a research synthesis on the pleasure of punishment, entirely relieved me of teaching obligations for a full year, which I spent re-reading works in the philosophical tradition and making notes. The grant also allowed me to spend the autumn of 2019 as a visiting professor at the Mannheim Centre for Criminology in the London School of Economics, generously invited by Tim Newburn, sharing office space and thoughts with Janet Foster and Alice Sampson. Thanks also to Johann Koehler and Mats Deland for enthusiasm and feedback on the historical. I am especially grateful to Vanessa Barker for innumerable coffee chats at all stages of the project, and for challenging me on the issue why it mattered. Mellika Melouani Melani, my life companion, presented me to the worlds of art and opera, and inspired me to think of desire as unrestrained and as something to be pursued at all costs. newgenprepdf 'the only appropriate word' in German-Lust-was inevitably ambiguous, and designated 'the experience both of a need and of a gratification' (Freud 1953: 135 fn 2). The very word was ambiguous, and so was the corresponding conception. Freud's conception of pleasure covered both desire and satisfaction; on the one hand 'wishing, wanting and desiring' and on the other hand 'enjoyment and satisfaction' (Schuster 2016: 101). In itself, the distinction was not new. It was central to the classic Platonic approach to pleasure. In Gorgias, Plato treated desire as distress and satisfaction as the relief of distress, thereby posing the problem of transformation: how could experiences, ranging from acute pain to a mere sense of unease, transform into the very opposite, the experience of being at ease? Plato's conception of pleasure was modelled after the satisfaction of bodily needs: hunger, thirst and sex. There is a perpetual movement back and forth: desire turns into satisfaction, which recedes into desire, a desire that may turn into renewed satisfaction, or not, and so forth. Freud discovered the tension, or the radical disjunction between desire and enjoyment. Desire and enjoyment were essentially irreconcilable. There can be no simple match, no carefree immersion in everyday life. It has been explicated as forces pulling in different directions; 'desire goes one way, and satisfaction another' (Schuster 2016: 122). I prefer the metaphor of a gap to describe the relationship. Throughout the book, I will talk about the gap between desire and enjoyment. The word 'gap' emphasizes their essential irreconcilability, as well as the necessity to bridge the gap, by actions or interventions, to transform desire into enjoyment. The pleasure of punishment may strike readers as an odd topic. Starting talking about 'the pleasure of punishment', I have noticed in the process of writing this book, often makes people associate it with sadism, or misogyny,

European Journal of Criminology, 2016

This article accounts for the tacit politics of the 2013 Stockholm riots. Based on interviews wit... more This article accounts for the tacit politics of the 2013 Stockholm riots. Based on interviews with local residents and a study of the parliamentary debate, it is suggested that the post-war Swedish welfare state generated commonly shared conceptions, which ascribed a temporary legitimacy to the riots within the community by conceptualizing poor living conditions and police racism as government infractions. The modern moral economy was endorsed by the political establishment, with a cynical twist. For future studies of similar riots, it is argued that, although the classical notion of moral economy successfully directs attention to the normative conceptions that propel riots, the notion must be extended with a racialized dimension, the concept of citizenship, and new incarnations of government infraction.

Brott i välfärden. Om brottslighet, utsatthet och …, 2007

Nils Christie et tales så mye om alderens besvaerligheter. Men med besvaerlighetene følger også n... more Nils Christie et tales så mye om alderens besvaerligheter. Men med besvaerlighetene følger også noen bekvemmeligheter. For en samfunnsforsker kan det vaere ganske fint å vaere gammel. Under den forutsetning at man fortsatt har noen åndskraft i behold, gis man det ekstraordinaere fortrinn at man har et meget langt spenn av observasjoner til rådighet. Hvor andre må gå til bøkene, kan man selv gå til opplevelsene. Men så til saken. Og saken er fattigdom. Min påstand vil vaere at vi på sentrale områder i våre typer industrisamfunn er gått inn i nye former for fattigdom. Nye, i tillegg til enkelte av de gamle. Den materielle fattigdom Først noe om de gamle former for fattigdom. De gamle,-i en ny verden. De gamle former er der. På en måte mindre, på andre måte mer. Noe av nedgangen i den absolutte fattigdom er åpenbar. Få barn i våre land sulter. Piken med fyrstikkene har vaert i sin himmel nokså lenge. Antagelig er det i Norden faerre enn før som på vinterstid sover helt uten tak over hodet. Men sikkert er det ikke. Mennesker uten oppholdstillatelse i våre Nordiske paradis lever tunge liv. Borte er heller ikke døden som avspeiling av den gam- Takk til Hedda Giertsen som er kommet med en rekke viktige innspill til denne artikkel.

Criminal Justice Matters, 2007

The Pleasure of Punishment, 2021

The pleasure of punishment changed character with the passage to modernity. The chapter discusses... more The pleasure of punishment changed character with the passage to modernity. The chapter discusses some key indicators, as well as available interpretations of the transformation. The first thing to note is the gradual disappearance of pleasure from public sight. Available historical research suggests that observable signs of pleasure at executions sites – laughter, cheers, drinking, merriness – became more infrequent in the nineteenth century, compared to the preceding two centuries. Another indicator of change was that pleasure lost its former innocence in moral philosophy. Pleasure became problematic: suspicious and socially inappropriate. A comparison between Bentham and Kant, on the one hand, and Nietzsche and Freud, on the other hand, reveals that pleasure replaced anger as the most disruptive passion in the context of punishment. At the same time, the long silence on the modern pleasure of punishment was initiated in social science. In the influential accounts given by Durkheim, Elias and Foucault, pleasure was seen to be strictly confined to the pre-modern period, when the enjoyment was shamelessly expressed at the scaffold. Alternatively, modern pleasure of punishment was treated as an obscure side-effect of power, and made to disappear on conceptual grounds. Given the prevailing problematic of subject formation, pleasure was redundant.

Four interventions are analysed: the activity guarantee for long term unemployed, the customs con... more Four interventions are analysed: the activity guarantee for long term unemployed, the customs control of border crossers, the cognitive skills training program and the conditions of incarceration a ...

I maj 2013 blev Husby nyhetsstoff i hela världen. Brinnande bilar och stenkastande ungdomar disku... more I maj 2013 blev Husby nyhetsstoff i hela världen. Brinnande bilar och stenkastande ungdomar diskuterades i media, i politiska sammanhang och runt köksborden. Medierna fokuserade intensivt på det som hände. Men hur såg de som bor i Husby på händelserna? Fick de komma till tals och i så fall hur? Åtta forskare från Stockholms universitet började samla in Husbybornas berättelser under 2013. Den här rapporten är den första sammanfattningen som är en del i ett stort forskningsprojekt om Husby. Rapporten lyfter fram de problembilder som Husbyborna själva ser som relevanta för förståelsen av händelserna i maj.