Do, 17.05.2018

Dr. Jennifer Chan (Margherita-von-Brentano Zentrum)

Bodies of Evidence. Gender and Prison in Latin America

In the current debate about „mass incarceration“ and the unstoppable growth of prison populations worldwide, little attention has been paid to women’s incarceration, particularly in the Global South. How is disciplinary power displayed in the female prison? What kind of subjects does it aim to (re)produce? How is the idea of rehabilitation entwined with gender notions? How does this entanglement manifest itself in the daily interactions of the incarcerated women with agents of the State? What role does the prison ultimately play in the lives of the marginalized groups that constitute its largest “clientele” in Latin America? The presentation will address these questions based on the case study of Mexico´s second largest confinement institution for women, the “Centro de Reinserción Femenil de Puente Grande”. Ethnographic fieldwork and interviews allow us to glimpse into the day-to-day lives of incarcerated women and the ways in which their bodies –understood in four different dimensions as social bodies, productive bodies, erotic bodies and biological bodies- are worked on through disciplinary practices.