Carceral Space

by Josh MacGregor
In the entry on "carceral geographies," The Dictionary of Human Geography defines as carceral those spaces in which "individuals are confined, subject to surveillance or otherwise deprived of essential freedoms." I use this definition as a jumping-off point for this discussion of carceral space insofar as it strikes me as productive but nonetheless limited in its scope. In this account, the central properties of carceral space are identified in terms of surveillance, confinement, and a lack of certain freedoms which, at least in theory, those who dwell 'outside' the boundaries of such carceral localities presumably enjoy. These can range from the seemingly mundane, such as the freedom to choose one's own diet, to the more obviously political, such as the right to vote or the freedom to move around as one pleases (all of which, we should note, are foreclosed to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals).

While these qualities are by no means incorrect -- as constant surveillance, forced confinement/immobility, and the loss of certain liberties are indeed at the fore of the carceral tactics informing the spatiality of prisons and other, similar institutions (asylums, ICE detention facilities, and so on) -- the over-reliance on explicitly carceral spaces and localities (spaces whose carcerality is expressly written into their very programming) and a similar overemphasis on physical structures like the prison seems to me too narrow a scope to account for the full breadth of carceral spatiality.

In the final chapter of Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault advances the notion of a "carceral archipelgo" or continuum as a way of thinking through how carceral tactics of disciplinary power can be seen operating beyond the walls of the prison and even outside the formal, juridical space of the law itself. With the emergence of the carceral archipelago, Foucault tells us, "The frontiers between confinement, judicial punishment and institutions of discipline . . . already blurred in the classical age, tended to disappear . . . [constituting] a great carceral continuum that diffused pentitentiary techniques into the most innocent disciplines . . . A subtle, graduated carceral net, with compact instiutions, but also separate and diffused methods . . ." (297). Thus, for Foucault, the carceral is not something limited to expressly carceral facilities, but rather points toward various disciplinary practices and techniques of power -- least of which bears on the social production and regulation of space -- that effect a kind of "prisonization" of society, "transporting [the techniques of the penitentiary] from the penal institution to the entire social body" (298).

Taking this two understandings of the carceral together, I want to put forth a definition of carceral space that preserves this Foucauldian notion of the carceral as a set of practices and strategies of which actual walls, cameras, and cages comprise only a few crucial parts. Running the risk of contradicting the aim suggested by the title of this post, I propose that we think of the carceral as a property of (certain) spaces, a logic that informs, whether consciously or unconsciously, the sets of relations that organize a particular space and the spatiality that characterizes it. In doing so, we not only expand our understanding of carceral space beyond the physical walls of such obvious examples as the prison or the psychiatric institution, but also open up ways of thinking about the potential for resistance and subversion within such spaces, insofar as the programming or intended use of a particular space always carries with it the possibility for critical appropriation and/or "misuse" (see note 1).

Notes:

=
1.) Here I am indebted to the work of Jean Ulrick-Désert, who in his theorization of queer space observes that "the possibility of any space is latent until the moment it doubles and is devoured by the contradictions of its program and the actual events of its construction, use, and eventual destruction" (21). Space, in this account, always carries within it a certain elasticity or potential for subversion insofar as it can always be critically repurposed, remade, and/or transformed through a process of activation on the part of its inhabitants; a critical misuse of space for ends outside of its intended programming ("Queer Space" 21). ====== References:

"Carceral Geographies." The Dictionary of Human Geography. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2009. Credo          Reference. Web. 18 November 2014.

Désert, Jean-Ulrick. "Queer Space." Queers in Space: Communities / Public Places / Sites of Resistance. Eds. Ingram, Gordon Brent, Anne-Marie Bouthillette, and Yolanda Retter. Seattle: Bay Press, 1997. Print.

Foucault, Michel. ''Discipline and Punish. ''Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage, 1995. Print.