“Je ne vous ferai point ici la description de la maison de Saint-Lazare” : pratique et politique de la frontière carcérale chez Chapelle
Abstract
In his prison writings, Chapelle recounts his incarceration at Saint-Lazare, in response to the indictments of his aunts, ‘the sisters of M. Lhuillier’. Without invective, complaint, or defense, the poems of Chapelle invert certain representations of space, while proposing another ‘political’ possibility: an alternative representation of the social body. If the poet condemns the mission of Saint-Lazare, it is above all as a religious space. The sacred rituals that take place in Saint-Lazare are empty of spiritual meaning, and thus isolate the prisoner and render his situation unbearable. These physical constraints cannot liberate the soul, as the experience of incarceration leads neither to introspection nor to metaphysical self-discovery. In contrast, writings from and on prison, permit a representation of the subject at the centre of an amicable society, a space and arrangement wholly different from both the familial and ecclesiastical order.
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