The present study raises questions onto the way the penitentiary system is structured by seeking theoretical approaches which could allow discussion about the subject as submitted to the guided speech present throughout the whole system. In that sense, the basis for discussion lies on questions already elicited by Foucault, to whom the humanistic speech grounding the penitentiary system is formed as a type of conduct control and maintenance of power relations. Nevertheless, in those questions, we propose the inclusion of the problem within the subjectivity implied in the logic pertaining to the imprisonment status, from (and under) the subject’s references taken for granted in psychoanalysis.
Penitentiary system; Humanistic speech; Subjectivity