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Paper Short Abstract:

My work centers on the possibilities of life within Lebanon’s convoluted carceral network. Specifically, I explore how prisoners conjure alternative solidarities that undo and resist the prison's suppression of care. To conduct this study, I draw on the memories of one former prisoner named Sana.

Paper Abstract:

Lebanon’s “prisons” powerfully attest to the ways in which carceral logics are embedded and reproduced across a nexus of varying sites and spaces. In Lebanon, carceral and confinement spaces are located in abandoned buildings, underground parking lots, police barracks, and other such structures. These spaces are marked by brutality and neglect: mattresses are exposed to mold and bugs, diseases and infections spread rampantly, and food and water are scarce commodities. How do people survive and live in such precarious places? My work centers on the possibilities and impossibilities of life within Lebanon’s twisted carceral network by drawing on the memories of one former prisoner named Sana.

By listening to Sana's stories, I learned about the bonds and solidarities that prisoners forged with one another. In my paper, I accordingly show how prisoners mobilized these bonds to subvert and undo the suppression of intimacy and care that is endemic to carceral spaces. I conceptualize prisoners’ relationships as forms of collaborative survival in a context that is becoming exceedingly unlivable amidst Lebanon’s ongoing socio-economic collapse. I argue that these relationships point to cracks in the workings of carceral power. By "crack," I mean gaps and openings within seemingly all-consuming carceral systems. These cracks are small spaces of alterity where prisoners care for and collaborate with one another to transform everyday life inside the prison.

In the end, my paper suggests that Sana’s memories resist and undo the specter of carceral power in Lebanon – never seen, largely forgotten, but always present.