Exploring prison through memory: Stories from a women's prison in Beirut

Abstract

In Lebanon, carceral spaces are located in abandoned buildings, underground parking lots, and other such structures. These spaces are marked by neglect: mattresses are exposed to mold, infections spread rampantly, and food and water are scarce resources. Yet in spite of this marked brutality, Lebanon's prisons remain underrepresented in the literature and absent from public awareness. My article seeks to undo this invisibility, centering on the possibilities of life within Lebanon's carceral network through the memories of one formerly incarcerated woman named Sana. From Sana, I learned about the mutual, reciprocal, and intimate bonds that she forged with other incarcerated women. In my article, I mobilize creative ethnographic tools to explore how Sana remembers the caring, kin-like, and relational bonds she forged with other incarcerated women despite the suppression of care endemic to carceral spaces. Drawing on the anthropology of care, I argue that these relationships point to cracks in the workings of carceral power or small spaces of alterity where prisoners collaborate with one another to transform everyday life inside the prison. In the end, this article helps fill a void within the scholarship on incarceration from which the experiences of incarcerated women, particularly in Lebanon, are still missing.