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

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.