The Political Prisoner as "Other-Among-Others": the Experience of Double Exclusion

This research is devoted to the study of the prison experience of political prisoners in contemporary Russia. The chosen topic has both academic and social significance: Russian political prisoners are hardly mentioned in existing studies, while their number is steadily growing. I view the experience of political imprisonment as an experience of "double exclusion", and the political prisoner himself as an "other-among-others". Unlike other prisoners, political prisoners are not only isolated from society, but also excluded from the hegemonic discursive order that constitutes the boundary of collective "we"-identity. I hypothesize that this feature must have an impact on their prison experience. My theory is based on the ideas of Georges Bataille, René Girard, Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault and a number of other philosophers. In my research I use an in-depth semi-structured interview method. The informants were 10 Russian citizens who are former political prisoners.