Everyday life and tactical resistance of the political prisoners: the case of F-type prisons in Turkey

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study analyses the everyday lives and resistance of the political prisoners in F- type prisons in Turkey by referring to the concept of ‘tactic’ by Michel de Certeau. It discusses how political prisoners resist isolation, separation, and reduction in such total conditions and how they produce communication, connection, and extension. The article claims that total institutions cannot always create a total order. The political prisoners resist being reduced to F-type discipline and extend their own ways of operating that organize their own everyday reality. How paradoxical it seems, the possibility of resistance and creativity is immersed in the everyday reality of F-type prisons. It only takes the practice of the prisoners to emerge.