A Circular Argument
A Creative Exploration of Power and Space
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- Description
- Contents
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- About
Uniquely combining two parts, one critical in the form of a research piece, and the other creative in the form of a fictional novel, this ground-breaking book spans creative writing, criminology and architecture to look at the ways in which power and hierarchies are explored and exploited in space.
Part one, A Circular Argument, is informed by a series of reflections on the author’s work as a prison teacher. Delving into the obsession with the circular as an architectural gesture and as a concept combining containment and transparency, the author examines spatial hierarchies across time, from the ideal planned city of the Middle Ages, to the all-seeing eye of modern digital society.
Part two, The Out, follows the fictional story of a disgruntled architect, a clever prisoner and an ingenious escape plan. Exploring how the complications and surprises of human interaction colour and change the supposedly watertight systems of social control society designs, the novel disrupts how we might think about space and power.
Injecting new energy and creative perspectives into traditional academic research, this practice-led book is an innovative exploration between critical and creative approaches, and between multiple social and spatial hierarchies.
This series has been renamed to “Emerald Studies in Culture, Crime, Criminal Justice and the Arts” effective for 2025 publications onward.
Chapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2. Acknowledgements Chapter 3. A Circular Argument. Chapter 4. The Out Chapter 5. Bibliography I
Martin Cathcart Frödén’s new book will surely accelerate criminology’s slow awakening to the potency and importance of imagination and creativity in rethinking crime and punishment. It deserves to be widely read and discussed by anyone and everyone who cares about the pursuit of justice.
Encompassing memoir, creative writing, criminology and architecture, this unusual book is in two halves. One is a critical, multi-disciplinary, autobiographical exploration of carceral space and place, time, absence and visibility, masculinities and vulnerabilities, movement and stasis, circularity and linearity. The other is a novel that explores in fiction the very same themes. The result is one of the most imaginative, ambitious, compelling, clever and funny books I have read. It is quite simply stunning.
Inspiring, bold and highly readable, A Circular Argument is a breath of fresh air in academic publishing. Employing practice as research to disrupt some of the hierarchies it examines, it offers a forward-thinking and transdisciplinary approach to spatial hierarchies with particular reference to carceral systems. Some of its most serious propositions are embedded in its gripping and entertaining narrative, proving that ideas are more effectively shared when rigour and humour go hand in hand. More of this, please - it's what we need to refresh our ways of working.
Martin Cathcart Frödén is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Malmö University, Sweden. His debut novel Devil take the Hindmost won the Dundee International Book Prize. He has been Poet in Residence for The National Trust for Scotland and his short fiction has won awards including BBC Radio 4's Opening Lines.