This contribution intends to analyse textually three contemporary narratives: La Quarantaine (1995) by J.M.G. Le Clézio, Guyane: Traces-mémoires du bagne (1994; photographs by Rodolphe Hammadi) and Un dimanche au cachot (2007) by Patrick Chamoiseau. The aim is to explore the way these writers give a “poethic” (Pinson) of the captive body, witness or victim of the colonial yoke. Cell of the Maîtres-békés, Flat Island in quarantine, Guianese penal colony, what tell those concentration-camps to these “ragmen” (Benjamin) of the History? Could the scars of the colonial past be – not “objectified” (Ricœur) – but emotional and synesthesic? As oppressing as the prison is, could it turn to be liberating of self-consciousness and communalism? Which aesthetic and ethical questions the perception and figuration of a palimpsestic body raise about the indescribable of the chained human condition?