Sport as a Vector of Creative Experience in Prison. The Case of Volleyball at the Rennes Detention Centre for Women

Abstract

Le cas du volley-ball au Centre de detention pour femmes de Rennes Starting from notions and concepts developed by Goffman and the socio-anthropology of play, this article proposes an analysis of convicts' lived experiences in the area of team sports in a prison milieu. Penitentiary sociological studies generally tend to explain the conduct of detainees in terms of strategies and resistances. It is certainly undeniable that the constraints related to incarceration generate many losses for prisoners, and that they try to fabricate arrangements for bypassing obstacles and for compensation. Nevertheless, due to the installation of these arrangements, consisting in mobilizing varied objects and transitional phenomena, and under environmental conditions (topological, human and material) instilling sufficient confidence in them, certain prisoners manage to have creative experiences (the impression “of escaping”, of no longer being prisoners). Despite the precarious, transitory and situated nature of these forms of experience to a certain extent they allow a suspension and attenuation of their constraints, releasing them emotionally and “lasting” over time.