Judicial façades

In some countries, cases are being dealt with more and more behind closed doors so that justice can no longer be seen to be done. In such closed courts, individuals are targeted by frivolous legislation from the side of the state. The chapter focuses on recent cases in Russia involving defendants who consider it their duty to deal with issues publicly and testably: journalists, investigators, theatre makers. To analyze the way in which the state uses jurisdiction to eliminate the threat these individuals apparently pose, the chapter considers how the defendants are made to appear theatrically from a “behind the scenes” that embodies jurisdiction’s threatening power. The chapter proposes a behind-the-scenes complex in the context of remediations that are part of a spectacle culture, as when court cases are shown anew via other media. The affective affordances that modes of appearance or disappearance offer are analyzed on the basis of the generic models of horror, puppet theatre, and zoo. The cases are a 1930 Soviet show trial against scholars and scientists, the trials against political critic Alexei Navalny, and against theatre director Evgenia Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petriychuk.