Inmates Discuss Foucault



     For the past year, Michael Hardt and Anne Curtis have been 
conducting a seminar on justice with inmates at the federal prison in 
Butner, North Carolina.  The seminar has involved reading various 
literary and philosophical texts (Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, 
Kafka's Trial, etc.).  For the discussion of Michel Foucault's 
Discipline and Punish we held a joint class with the 10 inmates in the 
seminar and 10 graduate students from Duke University.  These 
discussions inspired by Foucault were subsequently continued in the 
form of written exchanges between inmates and graduate students.  The 
following are excepts from those exchanges.  (Names have been left out 
of these texts, not to preserve anonymity but only because the 
identities seemed irrelevant.  Speakers are referred to simply by 
position, as IN or OUT.) 

     We would like to invite others to join in these exchanges, either 
by intervening in the particular discussions or by posing different 
questions about discipline and incarceration.  Please circulate this 
text and post it where it might reach those who are interested.  
Responses should be sent to hardt@acpub.duke.edu.  (Since there is no 
access to internet from the prison, I will act as intermediary.)



Sexuality

OUT: How does prison police, confine, restrict or alternatively 
   ignore, create, encourage sexual activity.  I'm interested in the 
   kinds of positive (i.e. creative, functional) effects of the prison 
   system on sexual identities and practices.  For example, does 
   prison provide for any kind of sexual freedom?  Are restrictions on 
   sexuality generative in some way?  
      On a less theoretical level, I'm also interested in the 
   practical aspects of sexual activity in prisons.  What is the 
   administration's policy on distribution of condoms?  How have 
   inmates managed to bypass restrictions both on the acquisition of 
   condoms and on sexual activity itself?  Is there any sort of AIDS 
   education that goes on either on a formal or informal basis?  How 
   pervasive is homophobia among both administrators and inmates?  How 
   do sexuality and lack of privacy impact on one another?  Do they 
   impact one another in strictly negative ways? 

IN: The prisoner is expected to transform into an a-sexual being 
   throughout his/her period of incarcertation according to written 
   policy; however, homosexuality is not only accepted, but in most 
   cases condoned by unwritten policy.
      The administration's policy on condoms is that they are 
   classified as contraband and not permitted into the institution.  
   Inmates do rarely manage to acquire condoms and evade the 
   fallacious panoptic structure in order to participate in sexual 
   activity.
      AIDS education is mandatory for all inmates and inmates are 
   monitored annually via testing to see if they have contracted the 
   disease.
      It appears as though administrators view homosexuality as part 
   of "The Carceral."  The prisoners view homosexuality as a behavior 
   that is either coveted or condemned.
      The lack of privacy hinders one's sexuality (i.e. masturbation 
   is performed privately), but I'm uncertain as to whether or not 
   sexuality and the lack of privacy strictly impact one another in 
   negative ways.

OUT: You seem to be saying at once that there is little privacy and 
   therefore little sexuality and on the other hand that the opposite 
   is true ("masturbation is performed privately").  Do you mean that 
   because masturbation is ordinarily performed privately, not that 
   much goes on in prisons?  Or do you mean that despite the fact that 
   masturbation is usually a private act, much goes on in prisons?  
   (...)  I suppose that though we continue to talk about sexuality in 
   terms of the private and the public, these words have little 
   purchase in the context of the prison.  Would it make more sense to 
   talk about sexuality that is constituted through public (and not 
   private) interaction and intimacy?  By public, I mean to imply both 
   the use of public space and the form of public spectatorship.  Does 
   thinking about a group sexuality change our ideas about what 
   sexuality might mean?

IN: For prisoners who choose not to enter the world of homosexuality, 
   masturbation is in fact the only means by which one can maintain 
   the emotional wholeness that derives from being sexual.  
   Masturbation therefore becomes more to the prisoner that merely an 
   act of sexual expression, but also allows the prisoner to explore 
   emotional and spiritual cohesiveness between mind, body, and soul.
      Furthermore, although there is limited privacy, the prisoner 
   tends to become more resourceful (i.e. use of bathroom stalls, 
   closed showers, etc.) and creative in order to meet the 
   aforementioned needs.  It is not uncommon to ask you cellmate which 
   is the prison version of a college roommate to leave so that you 
   can have some privacy.
      To answer one of your questions, yes a lot of masturbation goes 
   on in prison.  Although it is hindered by lack of privacy, the 
   prisoners collaborate to maximize the times and places of privacy 
   effectively.  


Perpetuating Ignorance

IN: By creating a mass panic against crime, that oh so amalgamous 
   term that represents all of mankind's "evil", the underlying 
   problems are systematically neglected, almost as if there was a 
   purpose behind ignoring the plaintive cries of the abandoned child, 
   almost as if he/she is being sacrificed in order to consolidate 
   power and the truth be knows, there does exist such a strategy for 
   a perpetuation of ignorance, or supposed ignorance, for it serves 
   to fuel the fires of moral indignation and mass anxiety that 
   polarizes an American population dedicated to accepting the loss of 
   rights and privileges to prevent that nameless perpetrator from 
   kicking down the door and ravishing the entire family.

OUT: I think you are referring to a strategy of perpetuating 
   ignorance, not by a lack of educational mechanisms, but rather, in 
   and through them, including the formal school system, the media, 
   community outreach programs, etc.  This seems very Foucauldian, in 
   the sense that, if one takes the central function of the education 
   system to be the elimination of ignorance, the generation of the 
   wisdom, then it is clearly a dismal failure.  As Foucault asks of 
   the similarly failed penal system, we must then wonder why the 
   American educational system has persisted for so long in relatively 
   unchanged form?  What positive (or, ulterior) functions might it 
   serve?  I think you have hit on a very interesting answer -- it is 
   a forum for the dissemination of particular ideas, myths, 
   discourses which make people more accepting of mechanisms of social 
   control. 


Drugs

IN: It is said on the street that there are two types of drug users: 
   those who use drugs and those who let the drugs use them.  The 
   latter should be given help; the former should be left alone, but 
   neither should be given life in prison, as so many are.  Is it to 
   society's benefit to spend so much of its resources on destroying a 
   subculture, simply because their attitudes differ from the 
   accepted social norms?

OUT #1:  Can we make a similar distinction between different drugs?  If 
   we were to forget which drugs are today legal and which illegal, 
   how would it be most useful to characterize in analytical 
   categories such drugs as coffee, alcohol, cocaine, heroin, etc.?  
   Would it be most useful, for example, to divide between those that 
   are ultimately destructive and those that are productive -- or 
   rather, between those that make us less powerful (intellectually 
   and physically) and those that make us more powerful?  After we 
   were to make this analytical division, what might be done to help 
   others benefit from drugs rather than destroying themselves?

OUT #2:  What do you mean by the argument that drug users are 
   "relatively nondisruptive to society," and "should be left alone"?  
   Babies born addicted to crack...  children left alone for days 
   without food because their parents are out shooting up a limited 
   income...  One woman I worked with openly admitted to pimping her 
   six-year old daughter when she needed a fix, saying that she really 
   loved her daughter, but the addiction was just too strong... 
   Clearly, these are cases of what you refer to as "those who let the 
   drugs use them," but how can the institutions of society 
   distinguish these people from those who are using drugs and not 
   harming anyone, without thoroughly investigating the life of every 
   drug user?  And, even if society could tell the difference between 
   harmless and harmful drug users, what assurance do we have that 
   people who seem to be in control of their use of drugs may not, at 
   any moment, lose control?


Education

OUT: It seems there are two educational systems operating within the 
   prison: the officially-sanctioned credentialling academy, and the 
   "criminal academy" (I am thinking in the latter instance of the 
   assertions made in class that an inmate can receive a "Ph.D. in 
   crime").  Carceral education can then be described as a positive 
   (in the sense of "producing") disciplinary function which 
   constructs two kinds of subjects: better-educated "citizens" and 
   better-educated "criminals" ("delinquents" in Foucault's sense).  
   It seems clear in Foucault that the criminal education is not an 
   unfortunate but unavoidable consequence of the prison system, but 
   rather is integral to the configuration of a carceral society.  How 
   can it be explained that this function coexists with the 
   "rehabilitating" function of the formal educational system? 

IN: To understand the thought of rehabilitation, you must realize it 
   is not or cannot be a forced procedure.  It must be a volunteer 
   modus operandi in order for it to be truly functional.  With this 
   said, the convict/prisoner has the choice to choose which avenue he 
   will take, to not return to criminal activity or to return.  By the 
   institution offering an ingredient for the "positive" avenue, 
   there's the idea of positive alternatives to the criminal 
   education.  You must understand that education does not cause 
   rehabilitation, it's a tool that when properly used can deter the 
   person from negative alternatives, which in effect is one more 
   deterrent for having to participate in criminal acts....  We have 
   access to virtually any type of information that you can dream of.  
   You only have to be creative enough to know how to go about getting 
   it.  We have a library here and access to the books at Durham 
   library.  There is nothing that I would like to learn, that I 
   can't.  Anything that I've thought of, I've discovered the 
   resources to get it. (...)  The Butner administration is actively 
   courting a graduate program.  However, the outside educational 
   institutions that have graduate programs feel this association with 
   prisoners as academic candidates is a negative association by 
   society's standards.  (...)  A school like Fuqua's Business School 
   doesn't want to be associated with the stigma of having candidates 
   that are prisoners. 

OUT: (...)  Since education would thus be understood as an Ideological 
   State Apparatus and the prison a Repressive State Apparatus I am 
   interested in the way in which the two interact, collude, conflict, 
   etc.  How does the intersection of the two provide a space (or tool 
   as you said) for "rehabilitation"? 

IN: No one has the ability to control or mentally punish another 
   person, that person is the only one who controls this ability.  
   e.g. By you not allowing me to have something, you don't cause harm 
   to me, unless I consent I need it.  If you take it away and I 
   direct my intent to something else, I'm not in your control, I'm in 
   my own.  I make the decision whether I'm going to let this bother 
   me or not.  Now with the intersection of education and prison we 
   have a collusion that is supposed to be of violence and ideology, 
   but in reality can be ideology and ideology.  You stated that 
   Althusser said each has traces of both functions, well the ideology 
   function of prison and its repressive state can be manipulated so 
   it becomes the primary function, which in turns transform prison to 
   an ideal state.  As much can be gotten out of prison, as can be 
   gotten out of education.  As a matter of fact, now this may sound 
   ludicrous, but I wouldn't trade my prison time for any type of 
   formal education in the world.