"Conversations with You, Places of Freedom": Writing, Desire, and Prison Intimacies

Abstract

This essay discusses prison letters between Gabriele Tiedemann, a German national incarcerated in Switzerland from 1977–1991 for terrorism charges, and two women with whom she was incarcerated. This piece focuses on desire in the context of prison intimacies more broadly, and its expression in prison writing in particular. I argue that Tiedemann's writing illuminates the significance of physical contact for sustaining emotional and mental coherence as well as the limits of letters to maintain prison intimacies created and defined by close proximity.