Ahmed Abdel Halim, Who Owns The Right To The Body: An In Depth Reading Into Egyptian Prison Life (Umam Documentation and Research Institute: Beirut, 2023).*
Interview and excerpt translated by Nour Taha.
Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?
Ahmed Abdel Halim (AAH): The book is largely comprised of articles I wrote and published between 2018 and 2021 on various platforms, including Jadaliyya. Towards the end of 2021, I decided to create a research book, discussing the visible life of the body inside prison in Egypt, which is shaped through the practices of the punitive authority on the body of the prisoner. From here, we see the different and overlapping representations of the body inside prison, which leads us to the philosophical question of who owns the body of the prisoner—the prisoner or the authority?
J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?
AAH: My methodology relied mainly on invoking theories available in a myriad of different fields, which discuss our topic of everyday life practice within the prison institution. Many of these theories are often not applicable in practice, and with practice being central to my research, I dismantled such theories with the necessary framing. The book is not about the history of punishment, torture, imprisonment; nor is it classified as a human rights study, which counts and monitors statistical data. It is not a legal study that scrutinizes and monitors the evolution and fairness of prison regulations; it is not a geographical study, which follows the prison’s age and history; and it is not a social study, which highlights lost ethics and recommends their restoration, rather than dismantling punitive practices. Rather, the text presents and deals with all these contexts—social, humanitarian, political, philosophical, historical, and geographical.
As for obtaining the details of prison life, I conducted thirty interviews with former male and female prisoners in twenty immediate (used for convicts perceived as immediately dangerous) and non-immediate detention centers and public/central prisons in Egypt, between June 2018 and February 2021. The interviews were not confined to people who had been held in only one prison. Rather, the prisons varied, with the stories amongst different prisons being very similar, allowing me to connect and analyze them together. Reference is also made to investigations, accounts, and testimonies of former male and female prisoners within Egypt’s prison system, published in relevant research, journals, and rights reports.
As for the structure of the book, it is divided into three chapters, containing fifteen portrayals of the body. In chapter one, I address the visible life inside prison, as well as the subordination practices that the authority imposes on the prisoner, transforming them into merely a naked body, a subject, an observer, a machine, a servant, a sick patient, and a dead body.
In chapter two, I discuss the concept of the right to own one’s body, which is primarily expressed in the right to sexual instinct. Here, I address the philosophy of sex within prison, in terms of the psychological narrative and sexual scenes of male and female prisoners, and how authority deals with these scenes, through both governance and punishment. The book also sheds light on language and its formations between the social gatherings of prisoners, where the authority of language overlaps between the prison authority and the prisoners—it is not only the authority that engineers the language and creates a character, but the society of the prisoner (the space that contains the prisoner with their culture, morals, and practices, along with their jailer) that also forms part of it. The chapter also explores the historical, legal, and philosophical contexts of sex as a concept and practice in the criminal justice system.
In chapter three, I discuss other representations, such as the production of certain emotions inside the prisoner through urbanization—because urbanization, as presented by the Moroccan researcher Idris Maqboul in his thesis on the interconnectedness of human beings, urbanization, and tongue, “follows the building of a culture as culture is the building of two ages.” Culture here translates into a spoken language, ethical practices, and so on. Likewise, the emotional state of the prisoner can be monitored and chronicled, as they will take us into a political and social history of a specific time. This, combined with the feelings shared amongst the prisoner’s society, translates into lower levels of authority. Police officers and detectives who deal with prisoners daily are not merely the ones who inspect, house, and feed them. Rather, they are the ones who inflict punishment, insult, beatings, and humiliation—so how does this complicated relationship develop between them, and to what extent is morality a source of contention between the prisoner and the jailer? Given that the jailer in this case, does not directly represent the metaphorical bad guy; rather, they are a person of authority who follows the law. However, following them here is an evil, not a moral justification.
I move on to the prisoner’s depiction and imprisonment in Egyptian art as “The Imagined Body,” particularly in cinema, and the extent to which it corresponds to, differs from, and influences real life. I refer to the artistic creativity generated by prisoners as a radiant light in the dark. This light is the talented artistic bodies held captive. This section includes the debate over belonging and national identity, as the captive body feels only insecurity and inferiority (what I term “The Non-Belonging Body”), the captive body disintegrated by authoritarian practices. The authority is also aware of with the existence of possibilities of collective resistance by prisoners to alleviate their oppression, and constantly uses its punitive systemic role to fragment any thought of resistance, which results in “The Defenseless Body.” I end the journey by analyzing the case of the criminal and political prisoner and examining how problematic and feasible it is to coexist with both society and authority once a body emerges from life after prison—“The Cast-Away body.”
J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?
AAH: This is my third published book. I previously wrote a novel called The Arab Alley, published by Fasla Publishing House in 2019, and a short story titled Swaying Bodies, which also addresses the state of the body in prison. Shortly thereafter, I published two research books, the first titled The Body In Egypt, From Politics To Consumerism, published by Riad Al Rayes Publishing House in 2023, and the second titled The Body In Egypt, From Politics To Consumerism, published by Gossor Publishing and Translation House in 2024.
In this book, I explored the relationship between the body and prison, and thereafter I published one research book on the relationship between the body and society, and finally another book on the relationship between the body and politics. From here, I am attempting to build a project that studies the direct and indirect relationship between the body and authoritarian spaces—such as prison, politics, consumerism, technology, and more.
J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?
AAH: The directed audience of this book is primarily former prisoners, of whom there are hundreds of thousands in our Arab world, including Egypt. The book is a research study, which prisoners can read to understand what has happened to them and their bodies as a result of the authority’s practices inside Egyptian prisons. However, the book is also intended for all readers—intellectuals, academics, and all those interested in studies of the body and/or prison. An English translation of the book will also be published in March 2024 by Women for Justice.
J: What other projects are you working on now?
AAH: As previously noted, two books of mine were published after this one, one on the body and society, and one on the body and politics. Currently, I am working on a biographical novel, within which I attempt to clarify the relationship between what Antonio Gramsci describes as the subaltern (marginalized) and the authoritarian leader of the nation, over the past decades in Egypt, through an artistic and literary narrative.
J: What are some challenges you faced while researching for the book and writing it?
AAH: The challenges largely came from the logistic difficulties of conducting the interviews, since all of them occurred while I was in Egypt and there was no safe environment to conduct the interviews with former prisoners. Likewise, the publishing of the book proved very difficult as no Egyptian publishing house was willing to publish it out of fear of harassment from the authorities due to its controversial topic of prison. As a result, in the end I published with a research institute headquartered in Beirut.
Excerpt from the book (from Chapter 3, pp. 176-190)
The Defenseless Body
With regard to prisons in Egypt, since resistance is non-existent, we are here not inciting prisoners to flee, but looking at the possibility of prisoners demanding their rights guaranteed by the Constitution, of their human right to live and attaining their humanity in life, in terms of psychological and physical dignity. But what happens is the exact opposite, and the authority knows very well how much it does to a prisoner, as it also has tools that forbid any idea, albeit peaceful, that refuses such a life. The tools of authority are many, including the constant surveilling of any act or idea of resistance. The authority through its tools, the cell Nabathsy for example, reports any prisoner speaking of the ideas of escape/disorder/suicide, as the third is also considered resistance, as the body's desposition deprives authority from controlling it. Likewise, striking or the act of escaping is "legally criminalized", and if the authority knows of any plan of such, it takes precautionary measures, through punitive steps, to dismantle what these prisoners intend to do. This includes punishing those involved, by beating and transferring, and thus dismantling the cell, as each prisoner is removed from the other and transferred to other wards, to never see one another for the duration of their imprisonment. This punishment can also include controlling the ears and hands of other prisoners, and thus making them live a hellish life, which becomes an example for those who intend to those who think of escaping.
This is besides the continuous searching of prisoners' cells and stripping them of things that could help the prisoner rebuild their identities, (such as) face mirrors, papers and pens. Such items are confiscated since prisoners use them to share their thoughts and feelings, as well as recreational things, such as the earphones and radios with them, as well as prisoners seeking to smuggle mobile phones into the cell, through which they can communicate with the outside world. Communication here, does not only mean a social communication act, but it extends to psychological recovery, which lies in the prisoner's communication with their self, which is revived.
The prisoner has the legal right to make a telephone call to their relatives outside, but the Authority disrupts this procedure through methodologies of self-isolation from everything outside of the fences of the prison space. This does not include the authority’s erasure of anything written on cell walls. They see what has been written or painted, and in turn, they wipe down what prisoners were able to write and punish them for writing as the writing and drawing on the walls of the cell for the prisoner is inspiring, meaningful and even resistant to methodologies of subordination, As they writes their thoughts, feelings, name, loved ones' names, songs, poetry, and beliefs. All of these make a sentimental memory, possibly as a protest or a documentation of the current moment in such a place. Many prisoners see graffiti on the walls of the prison, which has not been wiped down by the authorities, and which has been written for several years. Here, the writing on prison walls become a small and authentic type of graffiti and calligraphy art, which, after the Arab Spring revolutions, has been widely disseminated in various Arab cities, providing a revolutionary, resisting art that documents the credentials of events in the eyes of the revolutionaries rather than the authority and its resources.
When a prisoner dies, by the fact of torture or suicide, as aforementioned, all cells are shut down on the prisoners and are not opened for the whole day, for fear of other prisoners being angered from it, leading to their cheering or breaking down of any existing contents, or any other form of potential resistance. Likewise, on normal days, prisoners do not all go out at once whether on visits or for vaccination, but are rather divided into several groups that go out, and then they go in and others go out; This is to prevent a large number of prisoners from gathering simultaneously, even if the ward door is closed. This is to ensure that there are not many bodies free in a space larger than a cell, as the authority knows that there can be potential for resistance.
Other practices in the prison landscape, such as from food entry, deportations to and from prison, going to the prison clinic - all signify only close observation and tightened control over conditions that can create a space for resistance. This is besides the fact that next to some prison establishments, there are security force camps containing hundreds or thousands of bodies of trained authority, one of whose tasks is to maintain the stability of the prison and intervene in the event of any major riot or turmoil, which the lower ranking men of authority cannot unwind and put down - here these forces have full readiness to intervene through logistical and tactical tools to suppress any action from the imprisoned bodies. These are essentially isolated bodies, who have nothing to defend themselves with or any way to resist as the authority has stripped them of any tools used in self-defense or resistance or even shaping the body according to one’s own vision (tattoos), or killing the body itself, as we mentioned in suicide. These bodies are isolated psychologically, socially, and therefore (submissive) to authority.