Exclusion in self-writing:the legal discourse in letters from adolescentsdeprived of liberty

Abstract

This article aims to understand, through self-writing in letters from adolescents deprived of liberty addressed to their families, how exclusion manifests itself discursively in the process of subjectivation. As theoretical assumptions, we seek contributions in the foundations of French Discourse Analysis, especially in the works of Foucault (2012, 2013, 2014, 2017). It should be noted that the analysis takes into account the discourse inscribed in history, from a “self-writing”. We analyzed, through the Discursive Formations (DF), how the subjects who are cautious relate to each other based on the place where they are — the precaution — in order to understand how the representations they make of this place permeate their process of subjectivation through the legal discourse. The results point to the silencing of these adolescents due to the fact that the letters, when violated, pass through a control system.