‘I’m very careful about that’: narrative and agency of men in prison

Abstract

My research is based on lifestory interviews I conducted with men in prison for violent crimes. Having been deemed fitting objects of punishment, they were enjoined to speak of themselves as responsible, self-possessed agents who could have acted differently. Yet narrating their lived-through experiences, many struggled to convey their own victimization, suffering and powerlessness. Strewn throughout their narratives I found fragments, gaps, inconsistencies, false starts, pauses, switches between discourses, self-interruptions and frame breaks. This ‘narrative debris’ is evidence of the way the prison experience, and the language associated with it, make it difficult for these men to talk in direct ways about their situation. Not being able to talk directly about this means they are less likely to be able to think about it, which in turn means that they are less likely to see it as their responsibility. What is paradoxical, of course, is that it is the official discourse of the prison - which explicitly desires them to take such responsibility - that makes it so difficult for them to do so.