Liminality revisited: Mapping the emotional adaptations of women in carceral space

Yvonne Jewkes,Ben Laws

doi:10.1177/1462474520959623

Abstract

This article draws on interview data with women in two prisons in the UK to understand the emotionally nuanced and sensorially attuned relationship between confined individuals and carceral space. The article presents an ‘emotional map’ comprising: (i) living or ‘being’ spaces; (ii) free places; and (iii) ‘therapeutic spaces’ in prisons.This tri-spatial thematic analysis enables us to use Victor Turner’s concepts of ‘liminality’ and ‘communitas’ to uncover the complex, contradictory and sometimes transient emotions that permeate spaces in prison. This in turn allows us to explore the particular challenges that accompany transitional periods of adjustment to prison life, the environmental constraints that women in prison live with and navigate, and the careful ‘spatial selection’ strategies they implement in order to seek or avoid particular emotional states.

Highlights

This article is about the intersections of space and emotion in prison
The article aims to contribute to the nascent literature on the sensory dimensions of imprisonment (Herrity et al, 2021), because we believe that an understanding of places of punishment and coercive control is deepened by paying due regard to the sensuous, atmospheric and visceral dynamics between people and space
Echoing Fludernik’s (2019) comment that, ‘Once the jailer has departed, the prison cell . . . provides[s] an intimate locus of personal space and safeguard[s] the inmate’s physical integrity’ (p. 34), we found that some women began to highly value and look forward to time spent alone in their cell: ‘I know that when my door is locked no one can get in and I can’t get out

Summary

Introduction

In her analysis of the prominent themes in the literature on women’s imprisonment, Liebling (2009: 20) criticizes what she describes as an ‘obsession’ with emotional relationships; the emphasis almost always being on ‘women’s relationships with each other, and how sexual and family-like they are’, rather than on themes relevant to the prison, such as power, authority and justice (as conventionally found in studies of men’s prisons). Our aim was to attend to the synthesis of spatial, sensory and emotional dimensions of prison life, highlighting the profound challenges for prisoners to survive, thrive or reach a tolerable state of being In pursuing this line of enquiry, we have extended and developed the focus of scholarly attention from themes relevant to our participants’ status as emotional – yet emotionally limited – subjects, to agents with a full repertoire of emotions that are pertinent to the dynamics of incarceration (Crewe et al, 2014; Laws, 2019; Laws and Crewe, 2016).

Background and methods

Findings

Conclusion