CIAO DATE: 9/07
Culture and Conflict: Volume 55 (Fall 2004)
This article intends to examine a specific way of resistance to prison order, through the example of a collective fight led by an outside group, the Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons (GIP). Founded in 1970-1971 on the initiative of Daniel Defert and Michel Foucault, the GIP imposes itself as a criticism’s paradigm, in the sense that it produced the model of a total critical activity, both intellectual and activist. First, the article deals with describing the conditions of creation of the GIP. Taking place in the new era ushered in by May 68, the GIP’s birth resulted from the subversion of the prison life experienced by leftists incarcerated militants. This reversal of the reclusion was carried out around the issue of a status for political prisoners. Then, striking points of the GIP are depicted, in particular the multiplicity of its activist means and resources, and also its ambition to stand for an “enterprise of problematization”. In the same time, the paper sheds light on some methodological stakes which are raised by the analysis of the relationships between the GIP and its target: the prisons, that is the State.