Abstract
This introduction calls for a geographic and ideological expansion in the critical study of prisons and carceral regimes. While this was once a predominantly US-centric field, the authors argue that the prison’s underlying ideologies of detention and social death, its technologies of mobility and enforced immobility, and its histories rooted in colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade cannot be fully understood within the borders of a single nation. Instead, they advocate for an ever-expanding Global South–oriented framework. Featuring works by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated writers alongside academic scholars, the text foregrounds the power of testimony and literary practice as vital sites of resistance.