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

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.

Carceral Geographies/Geographien des Einschlusses: ein neues Feld für die deutschsprachige Geographie?

“…Damit zeigen sie ein Spektrum an Forschungsarbeiten auf, decken das Feld aber mitnichten in seiner Breite und Tiefe ab, sondern geben Einblick in unterschiedlichste Fragestellungen, theoretische Zugänge und politische Implikationen der Forschung. Zu den Beiträgen der Fachsitzung (Breuckmann, 2021;Klosterkamp, 2021;Nocente, 2021) 2022) sowie ein ergänzender Beitrag (Marquardt, 2022). Die Beiträge lassen sich gemäss der oben ausgeführten Strukturierung der Geographien des Einschlusses ordnen:…”

When politics are contagious: Covid-19 and political resistance inside an immigration detention center

“… 3 For a critical analysis of letter writing as an instrument to research incarceration see Nocente (2021) . …”