• ARTICLES

The ‘body’ in jail: experiences, meanings and identity

Giliberto, M.

Keywords:
monism, prison, body, constructivism, meaning

Abstract:
The modern idea of imprisonment in the West seems to have intentionally portrayed corporal punishment as threatening. It was the foundation and the fulcrum of the principle of ‘humanisation’ of prisons. At the basis of this principle there is a common dichotomy: ‘mind’ and ‘body’ as two distinct things. This occurs so frequently that it might be thought that suffering of the mind (or soul) due to the deprivation of liberty is not comparable to the suffering of the flesh, to physical harm. Can there be, however, an obvious comparison? Behind a seemingly unbloody appearance, assuming a monist rather than dualist point of view, detentive punishment can take on a very different aspect. People who have gone through this experience speak of it as one which involves the person in their entirety and which can be described in the domains of both language and knowledge, mental and physical. “Life changes here” is an expression which could become global: people speak of this change and often this loss of self, as also being in the body and in the modifications of the senses.