"I m very careful about that": Narrative and agency of men in prison

My presentation is based on lifestory interviews I conducted with men in prison for violent crimes. Having been deemed fitting objects of punishment, they were enjoined to speak of themselves as responsible, self-possessed agents who could have acted otherwise. Yet narrating their lived-through experiences, many struggled to convey their own victimization, suffering and powerlessness. Strewn throughout their narratives I found fragments, gaps, fissures, inconsistencies, false starts, pauses, switches between discourses, self-interruptions and frame breaks. Examining this "narrative debris" leads me to conclude that the discursive confinement of the prison actually militates against the men coming to responsibility for their wrongdoing, even as demands are made for them to do so.