Ghosts in the Panopticon: Afterlife and Memory in the Museo Panóptico de Ibagué

Abstract: In 2017, the Colombian television program Ellos están aquí (They Are Here) visited the ruins of the Panóptico de Ibagué, a former penitentiary located in the capital city of the Colombian department of Tolima, to search for ghosts. Four years later, the former prison reopened as a museum, the Museo Panóptico de Ibagué. I explore how the transformation of former penitentiaries into museums helps us think through repressed contradictions at the heart of Colombia’s criminal justice/criminal punishment system. Following an overview of the history of the panopticon in Colombia, I draw from theories of haunting and ghosts to conduct an experimental visual ethnography of artwork displayed in the Museo Panóptico. Thinking with the ghosts of the panopticon, in the panopticon-turned-museum, is one way to attempt to do justice to the unquiet dead, in the interest of constructing a more humane world for those still living.