Books, Bodies, and the Bars that Bind Them: A Bibliographic Approach to Prison Writing
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Cambridge
Department Name: English
Abstract
In 1975, Michel Foucault famously stated that by the end of the eighteenth century 'the body as a major target of penal repression disappeared'. My proposed doctoral research contests Foucault's essential point. When we study prison texts, I argue, we find that bodies - bibliographic, biopolitical, and otherwise - remain central to ongoing modes of repression and coercion - and constitute a locus of resistance to those same instruments of domination. My research will
explore the convergences and contrasts between prison texts, revealing the specificity of the prison text - texts which operate within and between various spaces; bodily, stylistic, temporal, geographic. This project takes carceral texts as its focus. But, as I take it, carceral texts provide an emblematic case study through which to think more broadly about the relationship between bodies and books. The very production and reception of prison texts are contingent on the
corporeal confinement of the writer behind bars. Through considering a genre which is inherently entangled with embodied experience, I go on to ask: what might the processes of circulation, translation, editorial intervention, and facilitation in the context of carceral output teach us about the politics of books in other contexts?
explore the convergences and contrasts between prison texts, revealing the specificity of the prison text - texts which operate within and between various spaces; bodily, stylistic, temporal, geographic. This project takes carceral texts as its focus. But, as I take it, carceral texts provide an emblematic case study through which to think more broadly about the relationship between bodies and books. The very production and reception of prison texts are contingent on the
corporeal confinement of the writer behind bars. Through considering a genre which is inherently entangled with embodied experience, I go on to ask: what might the processes of circulation, translation, editorial intervention, and facilitation in the context of carceral output teach us about the politics of books in other contexts?
