Paper short abstract:

Incarceration holds particular implications and affordances for the ethical self. This paper engages with anthropological and philosophical conversations, questioning some of the theoretical limitations on personhood, selfhood, and ethically-oriented self-transformation within carceral space.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the theoretical implications of imprisonment on selfhood, personhood, and the domain of the ethical, engaging with conceptualizations and conversations in the fields of philosophy, criminology and anthropology. Bridging off of this theoretical investigation, I consider what the particular affordances (Keane, 2015) are toward ethical projects within prison, comparing and contrasting obligatory, institutionalized rehabilitative programming that responsibilizes the individual to transform their-self versus self-led individual and collective efforts toward the transformation of the self, and society. In line with Saba Mahmood's (2011) parochialization of liberal, humanist conceptualizations of freedom, agency, and the ethical, I argue that freedom, while constrained in particular ways, exists within carceral contexts, and that the exercise of agency within these spaces is not limited to acts of resistance to, or subversion of carceral authority. The "ethical prisoner" is not an oxymoron, but a reality that challenges our theoretical assumptions about the effects of incarceration on the person, and the self.