The collective body: Legacies of monastic discipline in the post-Soviet prison
| Author | Lyuba Azbel,Evan Winter Morse,Tim Rhodes |
| Published date | 01 February 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480620930677 |
| Date | 01 February 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480620930677
Theoretical Criminology
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480620930677
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The collective body: Legacies
of monastic discipline in the
post-Soviet prison
Lyuba Azbel
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK; Yale University School of Medicine, USA
Evan Winter Morse
St. Francis College, Brooklyn, NY, USA
Tim Rhodes
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK; University of New South Wales, Australia
Abstract
The emergence of the prisoner subject is an element of local practices, including how
health is governed. Yet, disciplinary practices have been overlooked in research on
health in post-Soviet prisons. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 40 male prisoners in
Kyrgyzstan, this article performs a genealogical analysis by applying models of subjectivity
from Christian monasticism to understand how a healthy body emerges through the
contingent governing relations of the post-Soviet prison. An apparatus of “collective
self-governance” produces bodies that extend the self to the collective and blur the
boundaries between physical and moral health. Here, unlike in the West, the idealization
of an autonomous subject is inimical to agency and, by extension, health. Rather, a healthy
body is produced through a healing process that rests on submission to the collective,
with the threat of exile imminent. In such settings, health interventions aimed at the
individual are unlikely to succeed without a consideration of collective healing practices.
Keywords
Embodied practices, Foucault, governance, post-Soviet prisons, religion
Corresponding author:
Lyuba Azbel, Yale University School of Medicine, Section of Infectious Diseases, 135 College Street, Suite
323, New Haven, CT 06511, USA.
Email: lyuba.azbel@yale.edu
930677TCR0010.1177/1362480620930677Theoretical CriminologyAzbel et al.
research-article2020
Article
2022, Vol. 26(1) 57–74
Understanding how disciplinary practices constitute subjectivity has significant implica-
tions for policy (Bacchi and Goodwin, 2016). In this article, we theorize the post-Soviet
prisoner subject as produced through local practices, including how health is governed.
Post-Soviet prison governance differs in key ways from that of the West, particularly in
the perseverance of self-governing prisons (Oleinik, 2003). Yet, the role of informal gov-
ernance, wherein prisoners themselves are entrusted with governing, is rarely considered
when implementing reforms (Piacentini and Slade, 2015), including health interven-
tions. To theorize the disciplinary apparatus within post-Soviet prison and its subjectifi-
cation effects in regard to health, we draw on qualitative interviews with Kyrgyz prisoners
as well as contingent historical practices within early Christian monasticism. We posit
that, within the apparatus of “collective self-governance” that characterizes the post-
Soviet prison, healing is commensurate with an agency afforded through the incorpora-
tion of the individual into a collective body. We argue that policy interventions targeting
individual health are unlikely to succeed in the post-Soviet prison setting. By considering
the ways in which post-Soviet prison governing rationalities are counter-intuitive to
western models of discipline, we provide a point of departure for overcoming the
impasses to prison health reform in the post-Soviet space.
Informal prisoner governance: Toward a collectivist model
Underpinning the social order of prisons is a tension between allegiances to the for-
mal prison administration and informal prisoner-run structures (Crewe, 2009;
Kupatadze, 2014; Slade, 2013), with the center of gravity shifting toward the latter
where a void is left by ineffective formal institutions (Gambetta, 1993; Varese, 2001).
Prisons throughout the world differ with respect to the influence of informal prisoner
governance (Morelle, 2014; Narag, 2017; Nunes Dias and Salla, 2013; Skarbek,
2014). Post-Soviet prisons, heirs to the largest penal system of the 20th century, have
received little scholarly attention apart from some notable exceptions, which have
stressed their resilient self-governing legacies (Kupatadze, 2014; Oleinik, 2003;
Pallot and Piacentini, 2012; Piacentini and Slade, 2015; Symkovych, 2018). Piacentini
and Slade (2015) argue that a disregard for the distinctive collective practices of post-
Soviet penal culture has fueled failed prison reforms in the region. Indeed, research
within post-Soviet prisons in public health glosses over informal governing struc-
tures. As a corrective, we advance a model of governance particular to the post-Soviet
prison by tracing how governing rationalities emerge from a set of historical and
contemporary disciplinary practices.
Highlighting a departure from individualized models of western penality, character-
ized by Foucault’s (1995) famous model of panopticism, several studies direct attention
to the collective distribution of governing power within Russian imperial (Gentes, 2008),
Soviet (Kharkhordin, 1999), and post-Soviet cultures (Piacentini and Slade, 2015). Laura
Piacentini and Gavin Slade, drawing on Oleg Kharkhordin’s study of Soviet subjectivity,
make the claim that pervasive mutual surveillance within the post-Soviet prison (the
many watching the many) differs from panoptic surveillance which is characterized by a
singular point of surveillance (the one watching the many). We find that a genealogical
analysis opens up space for otherwise unnoticed forms of discipline taken within
58 Theoretical Criminology 26(1)
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