8 - Kackerlackas

Summary

Kackerlackas

The more I ventured outside of the core day, the more acute my awareness of how much time was spent holding breath, crossing fingers and hoping everyone had survived through the night. As my familiarity grew, my sense of ‘the count’ and the various points of the day this was conducted sharpened, a rhythm within a rhythm, and core strand of the prison routine. This altered my own perception. There was an imposition of the prison upon those touched by the residue of residing in its times and spaces that resisted attempts to contain and account for it. Power was conveyed here, not merely between people but through the grimy walls, the eerie echoes from dark corners, lingering unpleasant smells from straining pipes.

Kackerlacka is the Swedish for cockroach. Its pleasing onomatopoeia resonates with the itching unpleasantness of the creature it denotes, and prompts thinking about how sound and other sensory aspects of life convey stigma and exclusion from associations with particular spaces. As the hubbub from the men and their activities receded into darkening shadows, common spaces were reclaimed by the mice and cockroaches. Staying in the prison brought me into intimate proximity with sensory components of stigma amplified in the enforced solitude and constrictions of night-time, as well as its periodic, anguished interruptions. Occupying these times and spaces at Midtown prompted wider considerations of stigma and stain (Ievins, 2023), and how these social processes interact with the prison soundscape. Listening to the shifting sense of space, at different points of the day, made the mutually constitutive relationship between space, sound and stigma more audible. As understanding of these aspects of life grew, so too did the points of convergence in experience of stigma, and divergence in coping mechanisms between staff and prisoners.

Geographies of emotion and exclusion

Emotional geographies of prison spaces shift, not only over different zones as Crewe et al note (2014), but also at different times of day. Listening to prison spaces over a wider period of daily activity (and lack of it once the day's regime had been completed and the prison shifted to night patrol) added definition and texture to understanding how these spaces were experienced.