Colonial Prison Research Articles

Revolutionary women, body, and the limits of nationalist ideology in colonial Bengal: re-reading the memoirs of Bina Das and Kamala Dasgupta

ABSTRACT This paper deals with the memoirs of two Bengali revolutionary women, Bina Das’ Srinkhal Jhankar published in 1948, translated as Bina Das: A Memoir, and Kamala Dasgupta’s Rakter Akshare (Written in Blood) in 1954 to argue how their subjective desire and experience dismantle the gendered rhetoric of nationalism in colonial Bengal. The accounts of Bina and Kamala present their involvement in militant activism and subsequent imprisonment. Notably, there is an inherent urge in their writings to sacrifice life for the nation and a determination not to retreat from the torturous conditions of the colonial prison. The paper contends that the rhetoric of nationalism in colonial Bengal is embedded in hegemonic masculinity that initially confined women to the spiritual and domestic realm and later allowed them to be educated and modern without acknowledging their subjectivity. Activities of these political women thus destabilise the gender discourse prevalent in the private and public sphere of colonial society, which calls for a revision of the nationalist historiography. So, this essay will examine how tropes of the body, self-sacrifice, and penal experience, as produced in these memoirs, negotiate the nationalist ideology, subvert the binary of masculine and feminine, and establish their political subjectivity.

Correction: Prison Abolition for Collective Freedom: Facilitating Co-Resistance to Binary Colonial Prisons

Correction: Prison Abolition for Collective Freedom: Facilitating Co-Resistance to Binary Colonial Prisons

Prison Abolition for Collective Freedom: Facilitating Co-Resistance to Binary Colonial Prisons

Prison Abolition for Collective Freedom: Facilitating Co-Resistance to Binary Colonial Prisons

Sarah Ann Frank. Hostages of Empire: Colonial Prisoners of War in Vichy France.

Sarah Ann Frank. <i>Hostages of Empire: Colonial Prisoners of War in Vichy France</i>.

On Love, the Palestinian Way: Kinship, Care and Abolition in Palestinian Feminist Praxis

This article centres the forms of kinship and care work that Palestinian women perform within and beyond the institution of the colonial prison in occupied territory through an analysis of letters expressing grief, care and radical hope as material expressions of an abolitionist feminist praxis of decolonial love. Women’s letter-writing practices offer a material expression of the sentient life forms that suture the social fabric of the Palestinian collective, regenerating our connections to each other and to our homeland. This analysis invites consideration of decolonial love as a liberatory method through which Palestinians call each other into intimate relation. It argues that attending to this underexplored feminist praxis enacted from within the space of genocidal duress holds the capacity to amplify a Palestinian sensorium that sharpens our capacity to enact revolutionary struggle against Israeli state violence and settler colonial criminality.

An Annotated Chronology of Hansard References to “Colonial Prisoners Removal” in the Westminster Parliament from 1869 onwards

An Annotated Chronology of Hansard References to “Colonial Prisoners Removal” in the Westminster Parliament from 1869 onwards

Sarah Ann Frank, Hostages of Empire: Colonial Prisoners of War in Vichy France

Sarah Ann Frank, <i>Hostages of Empire: Colonial Prisoners of War in Vichy France</i>

Caught In-Between: Coerced Intermediaries in the Jails of Colonial India

AbstractThis article analyses the role coerced intermediaries had on colonial power and authority in the prisons of British India. Coerced intermediaries in this context were convicts placed in positions of control by the colonial prison administration as warders, overseers, and night watchmen and night watchwomen, summarized here under the term “convict officers”. These convict officers were employed by the colonial authorities to maintain a coercive order and became essential to the exercise of colonial authority and control in the prisons of British India. The article argues that with their employment, the colonial administration created a third group within its prisons, situated between the colonial administration and the inmates. This contradictory practice blurred the lines of colonial control and authority and raises larger questions about intermediation by unfree and coerced people in unfree and coerced colonial contexts. The focus here is not so much on what intermediation is but on what it does. At the same time, the article relates the system of convict officers as intermediaries to the theoretical concepts used by Foucault and Goffman and questions the binarity used in most of their theories.

Colonial Goals Through Colonial Gaols: The Imperative of Indigenous Self- Centred Self-Determination for Indigenous Decarceration

Indigenous hyperincarceration is a widely documented global phenomenon that continues to attract significant research attention. Much of this research, however, fails to accurately contextualise Indigenous imprisonment within the ongoing colonial project; instead, it frames colonisation as a historical event of only distal relevance to contemporary Indigenous incarceration levels. This article rejects this premise and scrutinises the coloniality of the modern prison. Drawing on illustrations from two case study jurisdictions, Australia and Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), this article frames the imprisonment of Indigenous people in colonial carceral systems as an ongoing violation of the right of Indigenous peoples to self-determination. Building on Fanon’s conceptualisation of ‘Self’ and ‘Other’, this article introduces the concepts of ‘Colonial Self-centred self-determination’ and ‘Indigenous Self-centred self-determination’. Colonial prisons, it argues, are part of so-called ‘justice’ systems that are imbued with the values and interests of the Colonial Self, not the Indigenous Self. Indigenous hyperincarceration in such institutions is inevitable and wholly consistent with the prison’s Colonial Self-centric episteme. Colonial gaols are repositories of colonial goals. This article concludes that addressing Indigenous hyperincarceration requires a fundamental shift in the terms upon which colonial states engage with Indigenous nations: that is, Indigenous decarceration requires Indigenous Self-centred self-determination.

Hostages of Empire: Colonial Prisoners of War in Vichy France by Sarah Ann Frank

Reviewed by: Hostages of Empire: Colonial Prisoners of War in Vichy France by Sarah Ann Frank Hope Hecht Frank, Sarah Ann. Hostages of Empire: Colonial Prisoners of War in Vichy France. UP of Nebraska, 2021. ISBN 978-1-4962-0777-7. Pp. 376. During World War II, France recruited colonial soldiers, but French authorities were unaware that the continued mistreatment of colonial soldiers would play a key role in the later fall of the Empire. Sarah Ann Frank covers all aspects of World War II colonial prisoners’ lives, such as their living conditions, their work inside and outside the camp, their health, and their political significance to France. The author has three primary arguments: France relied heavily on its status as an empire, the treatment of the soldiers was deeply ingrained in colonial racism, and the mistreatment of colonial soldiers created a strained relationship between France and its colonies (3). This study begins in the summer of 1940 and ends in the fall of 1942 but continues to cover the effects of imprisonment on colonial soldiers and the soldiers’ subsequent anger at the lack of reparations (260). The prisoners were treated with varying levels of violence, racism, and benevolence in each camp but generally throughout the Vichy government the prisoners were allowed to practice their religion and eat foods that would remind them of home, such as dates and couscous (218). Frank notes, however, that any aid given to the prisoners was to promote goodwill toward the French. Although the government did send aid, local donations and the French Red Cross together provided the basic needs of the prisoners. Furthermore, some French citizens helped the prisoners escape by acting as guides to the local terrain or supplying the prisoners with food and water for their journey to the unoccupied zone (173). The different levels of treatment from the Vichy government, the citizens, and later the Germans in German-controlled camps, created varying experiences for each solider. Frank puts a larger emphasis on West and North African prisoners’ experiences as they would affect the political climate in the colonies and influence their countrymen’s opinions of the French upon their return home. Frank explains that in order to sway prisoners’ opinions there was a large propaganda campaign by Vichy France and Germany. France’s treatment of the colonial prisoners was “certainly rooted in the French history of colonialism and its associated paternalism” (163). France continued to mistreat the colonized, but then struggled to maintain the empire that played a significant role in France’s political and economic power. At the end of this book, Frank explains that both the German and French propaganda campaigns failed not due to a lack of effort, but from the former colonial prisoners’ anger at their (mis)treatment and lack of pay. In the end, this animosity would initiate a new era of decolonization and independence from France. Due to Frank’s extensive research, this work would make an excellent source for anyone interested in the Vichy Regime or in the treatment of prisoners of war. [End Page 183] Hope Hecht Northern Arizona University Copyright © 2022 American Association of Teachers of French

“You're Not Defeated as Long as You're Resisting”

Abstract This interview with Lena Meari considers the history and present of Palestinian hunger strikes. Meari reflects on the political and theoretical dimensions of hunger strikes by Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli colonial prisons and illuminates their relationship to the history of the Palestinian liberation struggle and its transformations from the 1960s into the post-Oslo present. The interview situates the hunger strike at the center of a Palestinian political culture of anticolonial protest and argues that this form of strike manifests Palestinian aspirations for freedom that have continued to permeate the prison while transforming it into a space of struggle and reproducing Palestine as resistance. Each singular/collective hunger strike interrupts the colonial order within and beyond the prison walls and asserts Palestinians' persistent struggle for a liberated future. The demise of the collective hunger strike and the rise of individual strikes, Meari argues, does not necessarily signal the collapse of collective struggles. Rather, individual hunger strikes are what at present maintain the memory of past collective struggles and anticipate while activating anticolonial collectivity-in-struggle to come.

Settler urban geographies of decommissioned prisons: an invitation to a discussion

ABSTRACT As urban colonial prisons are becoming obsolete, cities must reckon with their enduring presence in landscapes that are continuously developing. Examining how decommissioned prisons are placed within urban development agendas in settler colonial cities, I consider the heritagisation of urban prisons as extractive; it captures and manipulates time through the juxtaposition of defunct carceral sites with the so-called “post” carceral city. This move is profitable for the city first since it generates “monopoly rent” from unique “cultural heritage” sites, and second since it “frees” urban land – now cleaned from its carceral past – for capitalist investment. Against this, the paper asserts that carcerality is a living structure of settler colonial cities. In these cities, racial capitalism has always been intertwined with punitive and extractive measures against Indigenous people, who remain unprecedently overrepresented in Australian prisons.

Glory and Humiliation in the Making of V. D. Savarkar's Hindu Nationalism

AbstractIn the European tradition, political emotion in the form of individual and collective glory was usually constrained by norms of legitimate political conduct defined by public virtue. This article describes an alternative relationship between glory and political reason by reconstructing the political thought of V. D. Savarkar, the architect of Hindu nationalism. The article argues that the relational concepts of glory and humiliation were at the heart of actualizing ‘Hindu-ness’ or Hindutva as a sovereign political category. The genealogy and development of Hindu nationalism is traced from the formative space of the colonial prison during Savarkar's incarceration from 1911 to 1937, the ideology's subsequent refining and dissemination, to its final form after Partition in 1947. Supplementing Savarkar's political treatises and histories, this article is the first to analyse his poetry as political thought. Together, these writings show how scriptural Hindu concepts like the gunas and prakriti were appropriated to justify a fraught majoritarian unity defined against endogenous shame sanctions and exogenous humiliation. In order to achieve this, political reason was yoked to a perspectivist history enabling Hindu self-overcoming, which was personified by communal heroes who embodied a passionate Hindu will to power.

아시아태평양전쟁기 부산형무소의 수형자 동원

Colonial Korean prisons mobilized the labor force of about one million prisoners nationwide, including the Hainan Island of China, during the war at the end of the war. The purpose of this study is to specifically investigate the reality of a specific region through the case of mobilization of prisoners nationwide. Therefore, Busan was selected as the subject of the case study. The materials used were military data from National Institute for Defense Study, data from the Japanese Cabinet for prison law revision, data from the Justice Department of the Japanese Government-General of Korea, and organized data(1984) from the Pusan Prison, as well as newspaper and magazine articles at the time. Through the above materials, I have summarized the patterns in which prisoners under the wartime system were mobilized into two patterns. That is the production of munitions in the factories of each prison and the work outside the ward. In Busan, the production and transportation of munitions and military facilities were concentrated for the war with the United States at the end of the war. As a result, inmates in Busan Prison were mobilized on a large scale to produce munitions in factories within the prison, to expand Busan city area, or to build an airport. This was a wartime labor mobilization that was different from the existing normal prison work. In this process, many victims have occurred since 1944, but prisoners continued to work like this for 3-4 years before liberation.

아시아태평양전쟁기 부산형무소의 수형자 동원

Colonial Korean prisons mobilized the labor force of about one million prisoners nationwide, including the Hainan Island of China, during the war at the end of the war. The purpose of this study is to specifically investigate the reality of a specific region through the case of mobilization of prisoners nationwide. Therefore, Busan was selected as the subject of the case study. The materials used were military data from National Institute for Defense Study, data from the Japanese Cabinet for prison law revision, data from the Justice Department of the Japanese Government-General of Korea, and organized data(1984) from the Pusan Prison, as well as newspaper and magazine articles at the time. Through the above materials, I have summarized the patterns in which prisoners under the wartime system were mobilized into two patterns. That is the production of munitions in the factories of each prison and the work outside the ward. In Busan, the production and transportation of munitions and military facilities were concentrated for the war with the United States at the end of the war. As a result, inmates in Busan Prison were mobilized on a large scale to produce munitions in factories within the prison, to expand Busan city area, or to build an airport. This was a wartime labor mobilization that was different from the existing normal prison work. In this process, many victims have occurred since 1944, but prisoners continued to work like this for 3-4 years before liberation.

“The Spirit of Don Papa Lives on in Us All”: Fanaticism and the US Occupation of the Philippines

“The Spirit of Don Papa Lives on in Us All”: Fanaticism and the US Occupation of the Philippines Jeffrey Wheatley It is a strange feeling for a historian of American religion to come face to face with a person they study. In this case, the face belongs to Papa Isio, a Filipino insurgent who lived on the island of Negros Occidental in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Papa Isio marshaled elements of Catholic and indigenous Filipino religion in his quest for political power and resistance to the Spanish and US occupations of the Philippines. He claimed for himself a number of impressive titles, including Son of God and the rightful Catholic pontiff. As such, he promised to usher in a new era of political and spiritual independence for the archipelago. When I came across his face recently, he had a new title. He is now “Don Papa” of Don Papa Rum. The rum’s branding, featuring an artistic rendering of him, emphasizes how Papa Isio embodies Negros Occidental and its rich sugarcane, now available to consumers across the world in its distilled form. The Bleeding Heart Rum Company, quoting the International Wines and Spirits Record, has recently touted the rum as the “fastest-growing super premium rum brand in the United States.”1 “The spirit of Don Papa lives on in us all,” [End Page 102] the bottle tells us. What this “spirit” entails, however, has been historically contentious. Whereas Papa Isio is now marketed as a desirable, familiar commodity, he was once, from the perspective of many US Americans and some Filipino officials, a dangerous fanatic. This essay explores representations of Papa Isio’s religio-political commitments. It does so by examining depictions of Papa Isio as a fanatic in US media, scholarship, and governmental reports. It concludes by returning to the Papa Isio portrayed on Don Papa Rum. The amelioration of Papa Isio in the form of a Filipino-produced and globally available commodity provides suggestions on how to—and how not to—think about religious fanatics. This essay serves as a short reflection on a challenge in my broader research, which examines the politics of the concept of fanaticism in American religious history. How might we study fanaticism in a way that goes beyond the dichotomy of fanatics as, on the one hand, religiously delusional and mindlessly violent and, on the other hand, more sanitized interpretations that strip them of their more radical and enchanted religious beliefs and rituals? Many US Americans in the early twentieth century viewed Papa Isio’s “spirit” as more threatening than Don Papa Rum’s quirky, prideful artistic representation of him suggests. He was, instead, a subversive fanatic who threatened the US occupation. In the early twentieth century, anthropologists, military officials, and the US public all took an interest in religiously-inspired rebels like Papa Isio. American media investigated the sources of fanatics’ authority, their rituals, and their material objects. Rarely providing simple, neutral description, these texts exoticized those so-called fanatics and sought, ultimately, to find ways to better control and even eliminate them. His “spirit” or, more precisely, his claim to have spiritual powers, was a source of consternation for US Americans. Eventually imprisoned after surrendering, Papa Isio died in a colonial prison. Dionisio Magbuela, as Papa Isio was known at the time, was a laborer early in his life. He was forced to move multiple times and frequently came into conflict with wealthier landowners. By the late 1890s, he had become a political, religious, and military authority figure on the island. Dionisio was operating within the indigenous tradition of babaylanism on the island. Babaylans were shaman-like religious authority figures, with ritual expertise, prophetic powers, and special authority. Babaylans were traditionally women. In the 1890s, babaylans were increasingly men who embraced more traditional expectations of masculinity. This shift in religious authority was perhaps because Filipinos were increasingly utilizing the powers of babaylanism for [End Page 103] war against occupiers.2 Magbuela began to go by “Papa” Isio to signal that he was the rightful Pope of the Philippines. At that point, he began to incorporate many of the ceremonies and powers attributed to the traditional Roman Catholic...

Imprisonment and Citizenship in Senegal, 1917–1946: The Case of the Originaires

This paper examines the incarceration of the Originaires in colonial Senegal to illuminate how imprisonment had shaped or altered their French citizenship rights in prisons. Among the prison population in colonial Senegal were some Originaires, the residents of the Four Communes who were granted French citizenship rights as early as 1833, a status that remained ambiguous until 1916 when a new law made them full-pledged French citizens. But the colonial government restrictions on access to full French citizenship rights in the Four Communes compelled the Originaires to mobilize to defend those rights. Their struggle found a breeding ground in the colonial prisons where some Originaire prisoners made two types of claims: to equality with European prisoners based on notions of birthright citizenship and cultural claims to being a different category of prisoners that deserved differential treatment compared to “natives.” By building their requests for equal admission to the European regime around the violation of their citizenship rights, this study will demonstrate that Originaire prisoners made arguments that tied their claims-making specifically to race and status without losing sight of the cultural differences between themselves and “native” prisoners, all in the context of a racially segregated prison world.

The Conflicting Uses of Prison Visitation in Mandate Palestine

The British who ruled Mandate Palestine established a prison visiting system that enabled inspection and oversight of carceral conditions by officials and lay representatives. In often contradictory and variegated ways, both the British and their subjects used this system as a political tool. For the British, lay participation in prison visiting was consistent with colonial pursuits such as advancing penal reform, attempting to “civilize” the local population, preserving the colonial difference, pacifying the locals, and co-opting opposition. The colonized employed prison visits for their own conflicting purposes: to advance both national goals and a universal agenda, to defy the colonial difference and to embrace it at the same time. British repurposing of reformist ideology to advance its civilizing mission was thus vulnerable to the claims of the colonized, who employed prison visiting to advance claims for ethnic and national equality, striking at the core principle of colonial difference. By examining the prison visit policy in Mandate Palestine, this article offers a pioneering approach to the political history of the colonial prison and the tension between penal reform and the larger colonial agenda.

Geopolitics of the colonial prison island: The case of Poulo Condor (Con Dao)

This article takes up the specific example of Poulo Condor (the Con Dao archipelago in Vietnam) as colonial prison island in order to examine this persistence of colonial island imaginaries built around the imagined project of the prison island well into the middle of the 20th century. Such imaginaries appear to run counter to dominant political discourse of the period along with ongoing media campaigns calling for the end to penal transportation and overseas penal colonies. This article contends that closer attention needs to be paid to the disjuncts and gaps between the official discourse of the French colonial authorities located in France and the enactment of such discourse in the colonies themselves. The central focus of the article is a close analysis of correspondence between colonial officials stationed in French Indochina from 1925 onwards; these documents will be contextualised with reference to the longer histories of both the Con Dao archipelago and France’s use of prison islands. An understanding of Poulo Condor as a complex extralegal space will be framed by Ann Laura Stoler’s concept of the ‘colony’ as it develops Giorgio Agamben’s notion of the ‘state of exception’ and Michel Foucault’s concept of ‘security’. What emerges is an ongoing colonial pathology which continues to fixate on the prison island as a key colonial stake even after such a stake has become increasing untenable.

Heritage, Memory, and Punishment: Remembering Colonial Prisons in East Asia

Heritage, Memory, and Punishment: Remembering Colonial Prisons in East Asia