The Fragility of Governmentality and Domination: The State, Carceral Labour and “(In)docile Resistance” in the Late Ottoman Empire

The “power relations” in the Ottoman Empire were gradually governmentalised and centralised through modernist reforms in the long nineteenth century. As part of this process, the practice of intramural and extramural carceral labour became an important element in the Ottoman penal system in the late empire. Despite the state’s emphasis on the rehabilitative effect of prison labour in legal regulations, particularly regarding intramural carceral labour, the expansion of the practice into extramural activities reveals that providing economic benefits was another driving force in the Ottoman case. In this line, extramural labour was used as a complement to free labour rather than a substitute for it. However, the adverse reactions of prisoners to carceral labour were just as important as the regulations, disciplinary practices, and the administrative and financial limits of the state in determining the success of the practice. By focusing on the resistance strategies of prisoners, including escapes, writing petitions, collective walkouts, slowdowns, strikes, and pilferage, this paper aims to amplify their voices. This prisoner-centred view enables us to take a Foucauldian perspective in the context of power relations and resistance to such practices and to illustrate how prisoners, as “indocile bodies,” weakened the governmentality and domination of the state through many forms of “indocile resistance.”