“We are prisoners, not inmates”: prison letters as liminal counter-carceral spaces

Marco Nocente

doi:10.5194/gh-76-289-2021

Abstract

Abstract. The question of porousness and liminality of prison has been the subject of a huge amount of research. This article focuses on the relationships, communications, and narratives that occur behind prison walls. It examines letter writing in relation to the construction of a bridge that connects the opacity of the inside with the outside, creating a counter-carceral liminal space. The article investigates the encounter between the outside, represented in OLGa (the political collective in which I participate), and the inside (the prisoners) through the process of letter writing. The article further draws upon my own positionality through an engaged discussion on the limitations of scholar activism and the problem of speaking for others.

Highlights

In the literature, there is no shortage of analysis of collections of prison letters
I draw upon a specific empirical experience of letters collection by OLGa (è Ora di Liberarsi dalle Galere)1, a small Milan-based collective that serves as a megaphone for the voices of prisoners who oppose the carceral logic and its establishment as a “total institution” (Goffman, 1968)
I consider the letters published in these booklets to be a “liminal space”, because I consider the exercise of writing in prison to be a “spatial act” (Shabazz, 2014:582) and a form of communication that occurs within and through prison walls

Summary

Introduction

There is no shortage of analysis of collections of prison letters. The study of carceral spaces views prison as a privileged observation point of the complex dynamics that structure the social order and power relations within our society (Vianello, 2018:832) and as a laboratory of political theories (De Vito, 2014) where practices are produced and tested (Gill et al, 2016:185) Prison in this perspective can be studied through the lens of carceral geography treated as the “apotheosis of carceral power” and as part of a carceral continuum (Hamlin and Speer, 2018:800). The narrative that emerges in this environment tells how “‘prisoners’ acute relationship with punishment through containment, surveillance and discipline in turn produces knowledge of the workings of carceral power” (Shabazz, 2014:584) For this reason, prison administrations fear the breakdown of their controlled isolation and that the prison’s unseen areas will be revealed as a consequence. After giving insight into the work of the OLGa Collective, its archive, and the types of letters it contains, I will first problematise the institutional environment of prison spaces that shape prisoners’ subjectivities and their letters in turn and develop from this a discussion of the issues of reflexivity and positionality that a narrative approach to prisoners’ letters must consider, spanning between activism and academia and the quest of “speaking for others”

The OLGa booklets

A narrative approach

Conclusion