Island Prison Research Articles

Hacking the Museum: Mandela27 – A Democratic DIY Pop-Up Installation

In Mandela27 the museum was ‘hacked’ to create a democratic Do-it-Yourself (DIY) pop-up exhibition, inspired by the story of Nelson Mandela’s incarceration. The installation tells the story of the journey from apartheid to democracy and reconciliation in South Africa through a 360 video, archival photographs, a digital game and an interactive timeline – all displayed from within a symbolic reconstruction of Mandela’s cell in Robben Island Prison. The project succeeded in involving a range of diverse audiences, including visitors from under-represented social groups, through its design as a low-cost, pop-up physical/digital installation. It was the design of Mandela27 that allowed it to be made available and freely accessible online across Europe and South Africa, where it has been displayed in multiple ways by local communities. Since 2015, the installation has been exhibited at over 50 venues to over 184,000 people and was still touring in 2023.

Analogical Perspectives on the Comparison between Vǫlundr and Daedalus

Analogical Perspectives on the Comparison between Vǫlundr and Daedalus

No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison by Behrouz Boochani

Reviewed by: No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison by Behrouz Boochani Marja Karelia Boochani, Behrouz. No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison. Translated by Omid Tofighian. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2019. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, more than eighty million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced in recent decades because of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations, and war. As a result of the huge influx of migrating populations, many countries have closed their borders to migrants, leading to the establishment of refugee camps around the world. One such camp was established on Manus Island off the coast of Papua New Guinea. It was officially referred to as Manus Island Regional Processing Centre, functioning under Australian jurisdiction. [End Page 243] Yet no processing seems to have taken place on Manus Island; it was effectively a refugee detention center with prison-like conditions. No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison, written by Behrouz Boochani, exposes life at Manus prison to the outside world from an insider's perspective. Boochani is a Kurdish-Iranian journalist, writer, and filmmaker who was illegally detained on Manus Island for more than five years after being forcibly taken there in 2013. He and other asylum seekers had traveled thousands of miles hoping for freedom in Australia, but due to the country's borders being closed to asylum seekers, their journey continued to Manus Island. Boochani asks: "Why did I have to arrive in Australia exactly four days after they effected a merciless law" (89)? No Friend but the Mountains is an autobiographical account of Boochani's experiences and observations while detained in Manus Island prison. He tapped the book on various smuggled-in mobile phones on WhatsApp and sent it to his contacts in Australia by thousands of text messages. Although the book begins with descriptions of near-death experiences and starvation during his journey from Indonesia to Papua New Guinea by truck and by boat, the majority of the narrative refers to his forced detention in the Manus Island prison. Boochani considers writing an act of resistance, an action to expose the unjust treatment of the prisoners on Manus Island. His writing is a blend of prose and poetry while many segments of his prose also reveal poetic tendencies. Writing music and poetry provided him relief from the atrocious conditions of the camp. True to his journalistic profession, Boochani describes events as an observer, as if he were an outsider relating what he witnessed, particularly when writing about physical torture of his fellow detainees. However, he includes himself when referring to psychological torture, such as round-the-clock surveillance of the prisoners, seemingly interminable waiting in line for food, sometimes unsuccessfully, waiting for a turn to use a telephone as mobile phones were not permitted, waiting to use the toilet facilities or medical services, and waiting in line for his twice-weekly cigarette allotment. "I have always despised waiting" (88), writes Boochani. For him, waiting in line was a mode of torture: "A twisted interlocking chain of hungry men / Bodies mutate under the burning sun / Heads in an oven fired by the sun / Undergoing sickening transformation / A long line of men of different heights, weights, ages, and colors" (189). [End Page 244] The constant uncertainties of life at Manus prison, which Boochani considers another form of torture, is what Dr. Shanthi Robertson from Western Sydney University refers to as chronomobilities, profound changes in everyday experience of time. This is particularly relevant in detention centers such as Manus Island, where prisoners are confined within an enclosed area surrounded by barbed-wire fencing, not knowing when they might be released, where they would be sent once released, or what their eventual fate would be. Boochani's will to survive was intrinsically tied to his memories of Kurdish mountains: "The vision of mountains upon mountains / Mountains within mountains / Mountains that are hiding chestnut oak trees" (31). Orchards of chestnut oak trees and waves of mountains surface in his memories throughout his time in captivity, inspiring him to write poetry and sing songs about them while sitting under a tree by the prison's fencing. Looking out...

Evaluating Patient Experience at a Novel Health Service for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Prisoners: A Pilot Study

Background The Winnunga Alexander Maconochie Centre Health and Wellbeing Service (AMCHWS) is the first prison health service operated by an Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation in Australia. This pilot study developed and implemented a patient experience survey to evaluate the novel model of healthcare delivered by the Winnunga AMCHWS to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners. Methods Patients accessing the Winnunga AMCHWS between February and May 2020 were invited to participate in the study. Descriptive data were analysed and compiled for demographics, patient satisfaction, patient perception of care quality, cultural safety, and patient thoughts on the Winnunga AMCHWS. Findings Sixteen of 26 eligible patients participated in the survey (62% response rate). At least 75% of patients were satisfied with the waiting time to see staff at the Winnunga AMCHWS most or all of the time. All 16 patients reported that Winnunga AMCHWS staff always treated them with dignity and respect. Of 14 patients who identified as Aboriginal, nine felt that they were treated better by staff because of their Aboriginal identity while the other five felt their Aboriginal identity made no difference to their treatment by the staff. Interpretation This patient experience survey of the Winnunga AMCHWS found that it has provided highly satisfactory, timely, respectful, and culturally safe care to patients. Due to the limitations of this study, continual evaluation of the Winnunga AMCHWS and future studies to evaluate the continuity of care, health, and re-offending rates of released patients are needed to fully evaluate the Winnunga AMCHWS model.

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.

This is Denmark: Prison Islands and the Detention of Immigrants

Abstract According to mainstream criminology, Nordic societies with their generous welfare states are supposed to moderate, if not restrict, penal powers. In the case of migration, we see the opposite pattern. In Denmark, we see extended use of penal institutions and penal harms to contain and remove unwanted populations from the region, including proposals for a prison island and the confinement of migrants in 19th century prisons. To make sense of these developments and interpret its social meaning, we unpack the logic of the punishment–welfare nexus and Nordic exceptionalism. We find that Denmark expands penal power to regulate non-citizens, deter migration and uphold national interests. These repressive practices are not exceptions to the rule but rather illustrate the exclusionary edge and very nature of the penal regimes in Denmark, a Nordic welfare state.

Life as an Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Male Prisoner: Poems of Grief, Trauma, Hope, and Resistance

AbstractFor Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, writing is predominantly about articulating their cultural belonging and identity. Published creative writing, which is a relatively new art form among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners, has not been used as an outlet to the same extent as other forms of art. This is, however, changing as more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rappers and story-writers emerge, and as creative writing is used as a way to express Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander empowerment and resistance against discriminatory and oppressive government policies. This article explores the use of poetry and stories written by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander male prisoners in a correctional facility located in southern New South Wales, Australia, to understand how justice is perceived by people who are (and have been) surrounded by hardships, discrimination, racism, and grief over the loss of their culture, families, and freedom.

Using A Culturally Safe Creative Writing Programme to Empower and Heal Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Men in Prison

AbstractInterviews with 30 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander male prisoners who attended a culturally safe creative writing programme entitled ‘Dreaming Inside: Voices from the Junee Correctional Centre’, are used to explore how (re)connecting to culture can help improve social and emotional well‐being, and how the power of being heard and being able to express feelings and thoughts through poetry and storytelling, can help heal deep‐seated emotional trauma and grief. This article addresses a gap in research and theory regarding what types of prison programmes may be of greatest benefit for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners.

From Humanitarian Crisis Management to Prison Island: Implementing the European Asylum Regime at the Border Island of Lesvos 2015-2017

ABSTRACTSince the 2015 refugee crisis the European asylum regime has been under critique for its shortcomings. In order to shed light on the effects of the implementation of the European asylum regime at the border islands, where 80 % of all refugee arrivals took place, I focus on Lesvos, the main island entry point, between 2015–2017. Based on empirical material and secondary sources I trace the evolution of the situation on the island from the increased arrivals of 2015 to the creation of a ‘prison island’ within two years. I operationalize the European asylum regime by looking at three aspects, namely, control, reception and protection. In doing so, I provide a periodization which captures the state of affairs when the arrivals started increasing, the course of events during the peak, and the consolidation of the new architecture of asylum at the island after the EU-Turkey statement. The article demonstrates how the prioritization of control, through confinement at the island, has been serving the goal of identification and registration while raising disproportionally the barriers to access international protection and leading to inhumane reception conditions.

Dreaming Inside: An evaluation of a creative writing program for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men in prison

Arts-based prison programs are often viewed as hobbies or as activities that have little impact on prisoner rehabilitation according to conventional understandings of the term. This is despite growing evidence that arts-based programs can assist with learning retention and can improve self-confidence and ways of coping with emotions. Generally, arts practices have been found to assist Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have grown up or live in urban areas with asserting and strengthening their cultural identity, but we know little about the effects of arts-based prison programs on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoner wellbeing. This article focuses on a creative writing program for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners at Junee Correctional Centre, New South Wales. The program, Dreaming Inside, has produced seven volumes of poetry and stories. This article combines and reports findings from two evaluations of the program, one using program feedback forms and the other using semi-structured interviews with prisoners who participated in the program. The themes that emerged from both evaluations affirm the program’s efficacy in improving prisoner self-esteem, confidence and wellbeing, and in reigniting and strengthening cultural engagement.

Holistic primary health care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners: exploring the role of Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations

ObjectiveAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Controlled Health Organisations (ACCHOs) have been identified as having an important role in improving the health and wellbeing of individuals in prison; however, a lack of information exists on how to strengthen this role. This paper explores the experiences of ACCHO staff in primary health care to individuals inside or leaving prison. MethodsNineteen staff from four ACCHOs were interviewed. ACCHO selection was informed by proximity to prisons, town size and/or Local Government Area offending rates. Thematic analysis of the interviews was undertaken. ResultsWhile most ACCHOs had delivered post‐release programs, primary health care delivery to prisoners was limited. Three themes emerged: i) a lack of access to prisoners; ii) limited funding to provide services to prisoners; and iii) the need for a team approach to primary health care delivery. ConclusionA holistic model of care underpinned by a reliable funding model (including access to certain Medicare items) and consistent access to prisoners could strengthen ACCHOs’ role in primary health care delivery to people inside or leaving prison. Implications for public healthACCHOs have an important role to play in the delivery of primary health care to prisoners. Existing models of care for prisoners should be examined to explore how this can occur.

From Across the Water: Nusakambangan and the Making of a Notorious Prison Island

AbstractThis article examines the social and spatial embedding of the Indonesian prison island of Nusakambangan within the colonial society of the Dutch East Indies. It challenges the conception of the colonial prison site as an unquestioned symbol of discipline and control in the hands of the authorities, doing so by studying the various images, reputations, and stigmas of the island that circulated in the colony. Its reputation was established and disseminated by journalists, politicians, and other “informed outsiders”, who paid short authorized visits to the island, and their conclusions and evaluations determined, to a large extent, the effectiveness of Nusakambangan as a deterrent and as a symbol of colonial discipline and control.

Caging Immigrants at McNeil Island Federal Prison, 1880–1940

McNeil Island prison was the first federal penitentiary in the U.S. West from its founding in 1875 through the 1930s. Thousands of immigrants were imprisoned there for violations of immigration laws, and also for drug and alcohol charges. It was at McNeil Island that in the late 1880s scores of Chinese were sentenced to six months hard labor for merely being present in the country without authorization, an offense that was not (and still is not) a criminal offense. This article reveals that the overlap between immigration and criminal law, known as crimmigration, began at the dawn of immigration enforcement.

Between free movement and confinement: overcoming boundaries in Simon Schwartz’s drüben! and Colleen Frakes’s Prison Island

ABSTRACTThis paper presents a comparative analysis of Simon Schwartz’s drüben! and Colleen Frakes’s Prison Island, two graphic memoirs that thematise the significance of border crossing and the overcoming of boundaries for their children protagonists. drüben! and Prison Island are autobiographical graphic narratives that rely on the spatiality of the comics medium to narrate the characters’ engagement with places that have changed after the original boundaries have shifted. While scholars have so far highlighted the pedagogical relevance of drüben! in relation to other narratives that visualise life in the GDR, my analysis aims at showing how Schwartz’s work emphasises the relation between free movement and confinement in the process of identity formation. By positioning drüben! and Prison Island within the context of childhood autobiographical comics that rely on spatiality, this essay proposes a reading that brings these two works together beyond their national contexts. My reading focuses on how these two graphic narratives foreground space and transitional encounters in their storytelling. Via the analysis of how the protagonists’ stories are visualised in the comics medium, I argue that characters’ identities can be better understood in relation to the spaces they inhabit and the boundaries they overcome.

Plant composition and diversity in a semi-natural Mediterranean island landscape: the importance of environmental factors

Islands crucially contribute to the Mediterranean Basin’s high floristic diversity, which, however, is at risk facing climate and land-use changes. Besides the identification of highly diverse areas, the knowledge about factors favouring diversity is of great importance. We analysed plant species diversity and composition related to environmental factors over varied vegetation units on a former Italian prison island in the northwest of Sardinia. Due to a long history of land use with grazing and later abandonment the nowadays protected island features a semi-natural landscape and can serve as an example for strongly anthropogenic altered insular ecosystems. Floristic composition, soil properties, microclimate and ungulate abundance were assessed. Relationships of vegetation composition and diversity with abiotic variables were examined by Canonical Correspondence Analysis, which indicated the importance of air temperature, soil moisture, slope gradient and C/N ratio for floristic differentiation. Most important abiotic factors for plant species richness were relative air humidity and soil moisture, while floristic diversity was mainly determined by air temperature and pH. Furthermore, observation data pointed to an adverse influence of ungulate abundance for plant species diversity. Regarding nature conservation, grazing intensity thus must be critically taken into account, especially for sensitive vegetation units like the coastal garrigue.

Penitentiaries, Punishment, and Military Prisons: Familiar Responses to an Extraordinary Crisis during the American Civil War by Angela M. Zombek

Reviewed by: Penitentiaries, Punishment, and Military Prisons: Familiar Responses to an Extraordinary Crisis during the American Civil War by Angela M. Zombek Sarah Purcell Penitentiaries, Punishment, and Military Prisons: Familiar Responses to an Extraordinary Crisis during the American Civil War. By Angela M. Zombek. ( Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2018. Pp. xxii, 287. $45.00, ISBN 978-1-60635-355-4.) Angela M. Zombek shows the value of fresh periodization and framing in this book on Civil War military prisons. Penitentiaries, Punishment, and Military Prisons: Familiar Responses to an Extraordinary Crisis during the American Civil War puts Civil War military prisons in the context of early republic and antebellum histories of incarceration in the United States, an early starting point that enables Zombek to provide some surprisingly insightful analysis. Zombek also shifts the frame of antebellum and Civil War prison scholarship away from some of the most famous and well-studied cases (other than the prison at Andersonville, Georgia, which is included) to focus on Camp Chase Prison (Ohio), Johnson's Island Prison (Ohio), Old Capitol Prison (Washington, D.C.), Castle Thunder Prison (Virginia), and Salisbury Prison (North Carolina) as well as the penitentiaries that preceded them in those states. Zombek avoids the northeastern United States to shift her analysis away from the well-known narratives of the dominant Pennsylvania and Auburn, New York, prison systems. Zombek uses these shifts to argue the somewhat startling premise that both Union and Confederate "wartime officials relied heavily on antebellum practices to manage thousands of captives. Antebellum assumptions about prison administration, the proper treatment of inmates, inmates' identity, and methods of punishment born in penitentiaries shaped the administration of both Union and Confederate military prisons" (p. x). Zombek finds that wartime prison officials relied on antebellum standards of humane treatment to pattern the punishments they fashioned for prisoners of war, wartime criminals, and civilians suspected of treasonous behavior. She stresses the commonality in goals—punishment—between antebellum penitentiaries and Civil War prisons, and she demonstrates well how continuities in penal theories and practices influenced everything from the Lieber Code to prison architecture. In carefully themed chapters, Zombek demonstrates how antebellum ideas about prisons shaped the experiences and identities of both prison officials and inmates. Chapter 1 charts how military, state, and federal officials (and some prison reformers) debated penal theories in the antebellum period, and chapter 2 examines how those debates influenced the building of penitentiaries in Ohio, Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Georgia before the war. In chapter 3 Zombek argues that both Union and Confederate officials assumed much power from the states in prison administration during the Civil War but continued to follow established antebellum patterns of administration and punishment. Chapter 4 employs creative use of prisoners' writings to argue that prisoners "manipulated [End Page 699] rules and shaped the internal dynamics of prisons," and in the process Zombek uncovers how military prisons shifted prisoners' own identities—often in ways comparable to prewar criminals (p. xix). Chapter 5 examines prisoners' correspondence and visitors to probe the prisons' wider social and political engagement. Even though outsiders were often concerned with prisoners' well-being, chapter 6 demonstrates that they retained a fear of escaped war prisoners, who were stigmatized as criminals. Despite stressing continuity, Zombek does chart some important areas of change. She argues in chapter 7 that the growth of the population of imprisoned women, who "faced an even harsher stigma than men," was one of the most significant changes of the wartime penal system (p. 158). Zombek could have analyzed race more closely but handles gender well. Chapter 8 details state and federal debates about prison reform after military prison closure, and the conclusion examines the failure of those reforms after the war, even as federal power was enhanced by prison control. Zombek's tightly written and argued account will be required reading for anyone interested in the penal system and should appeal to anyone open to seeing Civil War prisons in a new way. Sarah Purcell Grinnell College Copyright © 2019 The Southern Historical Association

Saffron Shadows and Salvaged Scripts: Literary Life in Myanmar under Censorship and in Transition by Ellen Wiles

Reviewed by: Saffron Shadows and Salvaged Scripts: Literary Life in Myanmar under Censorship and in Transition by Ellen Wiles Kenneth Wong Ellen Wiles. 2015. Saffron Shadows and Salvaged Scripts: Literary Life in Myanmar under Censorship and in Transition. New York: Columbia University Press. 288 pages. ISBN 9780231173285 The Ghosts of Censor in the Land of Saffron Robes Five years after Ellen Wiles' Saffron Shadows and Salvage Scripts, the specters in her book continue to haunt Myanmar's literary scene Arriving in Myanmar (Burma) to work for a nongovernmental organization (NGO) in 2013, Ellen Wiles, a human rights lawyer, got the rare chance to witness a shuttered literary community in its moment of rebirth. What was unfolding around her at a public performance—a poet burning a keyboard and a man recounting the brutal conditions of the government-run Coco Island prison—seemed unthinkable two or three years ago. Throughout much of the 1970s and the 1980s, Burmese artists, writers, and poets were in the chokehold of the [End Page 154] military regime's censor board, notorious for its paranoiac overreaction to anything that seemed antigovernment. Materials destined for printing and broadcasting had to be submitted in advance to the Say Pay See Zit Yay (literally translates to Press Scrutiny) authorities. As outlined by Wiles, the 1962 Printers and Publishers Registration Law defined the scope with a long list of dos and don'ts (mostly don'ts). Types of content deemed unfit for print include • anything detrimental to the Burmese socialist program; • anything detrimental to the ideology of the state; • anything detrimental to the socialist economy; • anything that might be harmful to national solidity and unity . . . (Wiles, 24) The doctrine was eleven items long, each item casting the net of ambiguity wider than the last, to catch virtually anything anyone might conceivably write, thus giving the Press Scrutiny Board (PSB) the justification to reject any material. Soon after Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party defeated the former military man Thein Sein's Union Solidarity and Development Party in the 2012 election, the country's literary community experienced a disorienting shift. Seemingly overnight, the PSB was no more. "Burmese writers marveled at the announcement in August 2012 that the most onerous publishing rules would be lifted and that prepublication scrutiny would no longer be required," recorded Wiles (Wiles, 27). Used to having every single line in their manuscripts scrutinized, accustomed to having whole manuscripts rejected for frivolous reasons, Burmese writers welcomed the new openness with a mix of hope and doubt, much in the same way a long-time political prisoner might find his sudden and unexplained release difficult to believe. In this rare moment, Wiles conceived her book project: "an ethnographic investigation of literary culture in Myanmar (Burma) under censorship, and the new directions it is taking now" (Wiles, 1). This was the genesis of Saffron Shadows and Salvage Scripts. [End Page 155] Written in Captivity Wiles gives a brief sociopolitical history of Myanmar, highlighting the swift erosion of the freedom of expression during former strongman General Ne Win's Socialist Era (socialist in name but authoritarian in character). Under the PSB's tight ironclad reign, the country's literary figures, ranging from timid to defiant, employed ingenuity to get their points across without getting arrested; to slip their words of conscience through the censorship loopholes; and, in some cases, to physically smuggle their heartfelt words out of prison at considerable risk to themselves and their collaborators. Inevitably, the exchanges between the authors striving to express their discontent and the authorities charged with silencing their dissident voices evolved into a sophisticated cat-and-mouse game. "In prison, I wasn't allowed pen and paper, but I wanted to write, so I would grind bricks on the floor and make a paste with water, and then I would use that to make chalk, and then I would write poems on the wall to memorize them," recounted the late U Win Tin (1930-2004), a former political prisoner and respected NLD elder (Wiles, 57). Along with the authors' backgrounds, Wiles has also included a robust selection of short stories, excerpts, and poems that were once banned or illegal...

Puritan Martyrs in Island Prisons

AbstractCharles I's Star Chamber prosecution of the lawyer William Prynne, the minister Henry Burton, and the physician John Bastwick generated both contemporary and historiographical controversy, mostly concerned with their writings, their trial, and their punishment in London. This article turns attention to their unusual offshore incarceration on the islands of Jersey, Guernsey, and the Scillies between 1637 and 1640. It examines the material, social, and spiritual circumstances of island detention, and shows how the “puritan martyrs”1coped with separation from the world. Though the discourse of martyrdom invited a compilation of miseries, invoking scriptural comparisons, this triumvirate experienced isolation that did not necessarily incapacitate them. Prynne savored the hospitality of his jailers, Burton smuggled out polemical tracts, and all three found inspiration in the book of Revelation, written by St. John while a prisoner on the island of Patmos. Each returned to the fray in the 1640s, writing works of witness and justification. Their experience of island imprisonment provided a model and an inspiration for dozens more who were similarly confined during the Protectorate and the Restoration.

We Are Barometers of the City; Collected Poems by Psychologists

This article is a collection of poetry by psychologists who practice in cities, mainly sunny Sydney, with solidarity from others. Poetic introspection gives us access beyond the visible into the affective atmosphere present in our therapy rooms, but also embodied at the beach, in the streets, in houses and apartments, in schools and further beyond the crowds to the bush and further to the island prisons and England and the United States. We present poetry as cultural data, a snapshot of the city.

Revisiting Colonial Dismemberment in South Africa: On Cultural Text and the Mandela Nuclear Family

For many years, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela—in a number of his public statements and writings—frankly expressed his regrets regarding the strain that his anti-apartheid activism put on his immediate and nuclear family. From his marriage to Evelyn Mase, and later to his second marriage to Nomzamo “Winnie” Madikizela, one central thread that permeates both is the impact of colonial-apartheid dismemberment on the Mandela nuclear family. Thus, the focus of this article is on the critical analysis of a cultural text that was authored by the late former statesman to reflect on various aspects of his life. Relying on his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, the objective of the article is to understand how such a cultural text registers the idea of colonial-apartheid dismemberment as lived by the Mandela nuclear family under colonial-apartheid oppression. Besides the 27 years spent at Robben Island prison, much of Mandela's life was characterised by his neglect of family responsibilities, as a result of the lived realities of his activism against colonial-apartheid South Africa. Thus, using the case of Mandela's nuclear family structure, the article critically analyses the role of cultural texts such as autobiographies in registering colonial-apartheid dismemberment in South Africa.