Six publishing operations in confinement contexts

Abstract

Editorial practice in prison invokes ways of doing things that pose a challenge for publishing studies. This article explores the work of editing publications carried out by six pedagogical projects in prisons in Argentina. Using the tools provided by studies on prison writing and education, it focuses on six operations that give a partial but significant overview of what publishing interventions can produce in confinement contexts. The subjective positioning as an author that the publication of a text implies is opposed to the subjection of people to the figure of delinquent reproduced by the penal system and common sense. From this position, the authors take charge of the job of inviting other people to participate in these processes through writing and publishing, narrating their experiences to make them known. This creates a recovery mechanism of materials that are produced in prison and that, due to its dynamics, tend to get lost. In this way, editing generates instances of visibility and denunciation of the conditions of confinement that the media and judicial discourses silence or hide. Shared stories favor processes of organization and collective resistance that enable dissent about crime and penalties. These aspects call for reviewing the theoretical-methodological assumptions with which we build subject matters, providing centrality to the editorial processes and the objectives and logics that guide them.