El Centro Universitario Devoto (CUD): su impacto en la subjetividad de los detenidos

Abstract

The Devoto Prison is an emblematic prison, which stands out for its location in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, for its antiquity, for its history, and for containing within it a campus of the University of Buenos Aires: Devoto University Centre (DUC). This university space is self-managed by the detainees who study there, reaching great levels of autonomy both in relation to the Federal Penitentiary Service, which manages the prison, and in relation to the usual dynamics of the pavilions where the detained population is housed. Among the numerous effects that the DUC generates in prison —both at the institutional and individual level— this paper seeks to study its impact on the subjectivity of the detainees. who decide to study there. The aim is to recover through interviews the voice of prisoners who study in this university centre, as well as the voice of people outside the prison who participate in it from the university. From these interviews, the hypothesis is extracted that the DUC generates an expansion of the subjective offer of the detainees who study there, by offering them new forms of self-representation and symbolic practices different from those in prison. Finally, it is concluded that the DUC expands the subjectivity of the detainees.