ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how prison space is actually experienced by those for whom it is an ordinary space of daily life: its inmates. It argues that in support of efforts to expand the spatial imaginary of lived spaces of incarceration. The chapter provides several different possibilities for prison space which include, but also exceed, totalizing experiences. It discusses that spatial genres affirm a variety of experiential textures and affective patterns which are discernible across broad corpuses of poetic testimony about incarceration. Affirmation of the manifold textures and patterns of prison space and prison experience needs to be done if people are to advance beyond totalizing notions of incarceration. The chapter focuses on support of a movement within carceral geographies to transcend conceptualizations of prison as totalizing spaces of absolute isolation, containment and dispossession. In heterotopic space, experience becomes fragmented to the point that absolute clarification about prison as a singular, fixed place becomes impossible.
