Corpi privati. Micro-strategies for the Domestication of the Cells in the Buoncammino Prison in Cagliari

Abstract

The article aims to retrospectively reconstruct a taxonomy of micro-mechanisms of “domestication” and personalization of the cells’ space along the three levels of the left arm of the former Buoncammino prison, in Cagliari. A field research and a detailed photographic documentation of the state of these places, in many ways remained as crystallized at the time of their disposal, on November 23, 2014, made it possible to detect the persistent tracks of their use, which evoke the strategies of individualization of the prison experience by the inmates. In segregative conditions that are extremely binding and endowed with reduced degrees of freedom, the relationship between the distribution and the exposure of the bodies in these places still manages to preserve margins of heterogeneity, dictated by the decorative objects allowed and then abandoned there, by the signs in the walls, designed to mark the uniqueness of one’s obligatory presence through messages or graphic reproductions of unavailable furnishings, by the colors applied to contrast the dominance of gray and green in the common spaces. The severe control and biopolitical discipline of the bodies kept in the cells, deprived of most of their multisensory capabilities seem nevertheless having left margins of individualized adaptation of the ways of living in prison. This still appear intensely echoed by the objects found in Buoncammino, and account for the personal attributions of meaning given to them by inmates. Nevertheless, it’s painful and difficult to think about new hypothetical uses of these spaces, despite they have been emptied for almost 6 years so far.