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Scrapbooking the criminal defence file

Free University, Berlin, Germany, alex.kozin{at}gmx.net

This article moves away from a common understanding of a criminal defence file as a container for relevant documentation and addresses it as a cultural object which organizes and performs various written documents towards making a case. In my examination I employ rhetorical ethnography of communication. Suggested by Thomas Farrell and Tamar Katriel, the method was originally applied to the analysis of the scrapbooks presented as the cultural text of identity. Drawing on the analogy between the legal file and the scrapbook I show how specific activities (saving; organizing; sharing) expose the criminal defence file to be a culturally choreographed way of law-making, whose performative identity is defined by forensic, deliberative, and testimonial discourses.

Key Words: act-object • criminal defence file • identity • performance • scrapbook

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