Books, Bodies, and the Bars that Bind Them: A Bibliographic Approach to Prison Writing

1975年，米歇尔·福柯曾说过一句名言，到18世纪末，“作为刑罚镇压的主要目标的身体消失了”。我提出的博士研究对福柯的基本观点提出了质疑。我认为，当我们研究监狱文本时，我们发现身体--书目、生物政治和其他方面--仍然是正在进行的镇压和胁迫模式的核心，并构成了对这些同样的统治工具的抵抗场所。我的研究将探索监狱文本之间的趋同和对比，揭示监狱文本的特殊性--在身体、文体、时间、地理等不同空间内和之间运作的文本。本项目以狱籍文本为研究重点。但是，在我看来，监禁文本提供了一个象征性的案例研究，通过它可以更广泛地思考身体和书籍之间的关系。监狱文本的产生和接受取决于作者在狱中的肉体监禁。通过考虑一种与生俱来地与具体经验纠缠在一起的体裁，我继续问：在监禁输出的背景下，流通、翻译、编辑干预和促进的过程可能会教会我们关于其他背景下的书籍政治的什么？

In 1975, Michel Foucault famously stated that by the end of the eighteenth century 'the body as a major target of penal repression disappeared'. My proposed doctoral research contests Foucault's essential point. When we study prison texts, I argue, we find that bodies - bibliographic, biopolitical, and otherwise - remain central to ongoing modes of repression and coercion - and constitute a locus of resistance to those same instruments of domination. My research willexplore the convergences and contrasts between prison texts, revealing the specificity of the prison text - texts which operate within and between various spaces; bodily, stylistic, temporal, geographic. This project takes carceral texts as its focus. But, as I take it, carceral texts provide an emblematic case study through which to think more broadly about the relationship between bodies and books. The very production and reception of prison texts are contingent on thecorporeal confinement of the writer behind bars. Through considering a genre which is inherently entangled with embodied experience, I go on to ask: what might the processes of circulation, translation, editorial intervention, and facilitation in the context of carceral output teach us about the politics of books in other contexts?