Prison Writings Research Articles

“The COVID-19 Murders”: Prison death-worlds and the fatal convenience of crisis

Since the eruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. correctional facilities have reported more than half a million positive cases and nearly 3000 deaths. The carceral regime's unconscionable response to COVID-19 has been accepted as a mere “failure” by observers. We question this reading given the dispossessing purpose of carceral punishment, instead reframing prisons as necropolitical death-worlds that weaponize crisis to advance their repressive capacities. We draw from 132 texts authored by 68 incarcerated witnesses and published by the American Prison Writing Archive to assess how incarcerated individuals experience and interpret both the COVID-19 pandemic and the mitigation efforts enacted by prison administrations. Rather than prisons struggling, sincerely, to slow the spread of COVID-19, witnesses call attention to how prisons constrict and evolve punishment under the guise of care. Sampled writings detail alarming changes, including the excessive application of already harmful practices like solitary confinement. Our findings speak to the “inside,” lived implications of disaster-response by death-worlds, where the necropolitical order practices and perfects its violence with little external protest. Scholars of carceral punishment should more deliberately consider the impact of crises like the pandemic, as it is certainly not the last disaster that the prison order will appropriate.

Freedom, Only Freedom: The Prison Writings of Behrooz Boochani, Behrooz Boochani (Translated) and Omid Tofighian and Moones Mansoobi

Freedom, Only Freedom: The Prison Writings of Behrooz Boochani, Behrooz Boochani (Translated) and Omid Tofighian and Moones Mansoobi

Introduction: Literature Beyond Bars

ABSTRACT Introducing a cluster on the prison writings of Kurdish human rights lawyer and politician Selahattin Demirtaş, this article explores Demirtaş’s multifaceted understanding of literature as storytelling (anlatı) and fiction (kurgu).

The Jungle, The Harbor, and the Left’s Early Reception of Radical Sentimentalism

AbstractThis essay examines the efforts of Upton Sinclair and Ernest Poole to connect their respective novels The Jungle and The Harbor to the nineteenth-century sentimental literary tradition, as well as their leftist allies’ reception of those efforts. Sinclair consistently presented The Jungle as a second Uncle Tom’s Cabin, capable of moving readers to agitate on behalf of working-class immigrants, while Poole engaged reflexively with the tropes and traditions of sentimentalism in order to model for his readers how they should respond to The Harbor. Although both novels became bestsellers and influenced later writers of proletarian fiction, early leftist critics dismissed Sinclair and Poole’s sentimentalism as aesthetically simplistic and politically naïve. This essay turns instead to a slightly later contemporary of those critics, Antonio Gramsci, whose prison writings argue for the revolutionary potential of sentimentalism. Reading The Jungle and The Harbor through the lens of Gramsci’s analysis of organic intellectuals and the cathartic power of popular literary forms, this essay contends, resolves many of the problems those early critics identified in the novels.

Ambivalence de la mémoire dans les écrits de prison au Maroc : cas de Tazmamart

"The Ambivalence of Memory in Moroccan Prison Writings: The Case of Tazmamart. The prison literature produced by survivors of the Tazmamart prison in Morocco is a moving testimony to the dehumanizing conditions of imprisonment. Whether in the form of testimony or fiction, this literature, which liberates speech and breaks the silence on a dark page of human rights in Morocco, reserves a special place for individual and collective memory. In this article, we propose to analyze the ambivalence of prisoners' memories. Firstly, we show that memory is represented as a source of mortifying pain that must be got rid of. Secondly, we show how memory played an important role, and constituted the vital space for resistance and survival. Keywords: Tazmamart, literature, memory, pain, resistance, testament."

Identity and solidarity in a pluralist society:

In his recent book Protestants (2017), historian Alec Ryrie argues that while Dietrich Bonhoeffer may have been “the bravest theologian of his generation”, the impact of his prison writings and his opaque vision of a “religionless Christianity” in a world come of age was disastrous for mainstream Protestantism in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. Ryrie’s analysis of the trajectory of Western liberal Protestantism needs to be nuanced by a more critical and contextual reading of both cultural processes of pluralisation and Bonhoeffer’s prison writings. Still, Ryrie’s sweeping claim goes to the heart of the question about the “usefulness” of Bonhoeffer’s thought and witness for the future of Christian discipleship and engagement in an increasingly post-Christian and multi-religious world. Can Bonhoeffer’s legacy assist Christians to negotiate the delicate balance between identity as disciples of Christ within faith communities and solidarity with people of other faiths or no religion affiliation?

Irish Women’s Prison Writing: Mother Ireland's Rebels, 1960s-2010s

Irish Women’s Prison Writing: Mother Ireland's Rebels, 1960s-2010s

Visiting the Blues: PEN America 2021 Prison Writing Awards Anthology by Pen America

Reviewed by: Visiting the Blues: PEN America 2021 Prison Writing Awards Anthology by Pen America Timothy Bradford PEN AMERICA Visiting the Blues: PEN America 2021 Prison Writing Awards Anthology New York. PEN America. 2022 (© 2021). 417 pages. IN KEN BURNS'S 2001 DOCUMENTARY series Jazz, saxophonist Branford Marsalis says, "The blues are about freedom. You know, there's liberation in reality. And when they talk about these songs, when they talk about being sad, the fact that you recognize that which pains you is a very freeing and liberating experience." In this anthology of award-winning prison writing, with its title that references the blues, there's plenty of talk about being sad and worse, and there's plenty of freedom and liberation grounded in reality too. Published in 2022 as part of PEN America's Prison Writing Program, which was founded in 1971 after the Attica prison riots, this annual awards anthology is open to "anyone detained in a federal, state, or county prison or jail" and includes five to six pieces selected by thirty-plus readers in each of these categories: nonfiction essay, nonfiction memoir, fiction, poetry, and drama. The introduction by Robert Pollock discusses his suspicions as a formerly incarcerated writer about what he imagined to be "privileged, snooty, and distant readers" as well as the community he now knows the program and its awards create. The anthology closes with an insightful and moving section of mentor/mentee letters related to the L'Engle-Rahman Award for Mentorship in which three mentors on the outside and three mentees on the inside discuss their professional and human relationships. While there may be liberation in reality, no one said reality would be easy, and most of the pieces in this anthology reflect this. Prison is the setting for many; others feature hardscrabble life on the outside before prison, with poverty, abuse, and drugs being common elements. Loneliness, despair, suicide, violence, and death are common topics. This isn't surprising given what we know about the US prison system, which incarcerated writer and mentee Daniel Throop describes as follows in his letter: "Contemporary American prisons function as social slaughterhouses wherein community ties and human identities are systematically chopped into mince meat." Overall, it's not a light or easy read, which testifies to the vivid, difficult realities it portrays. But this anthology is also a testament to survival, change, creativity, and liberation, even in the shadow of the slaughterhouse. George T. Wilkerson's nonfiction essay "Vacant Lots and Aviaries," a rich, complex meditation on survival, self-improvement, and the clandestine feeding of birds in the recreation yard by death-row inmates in Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina, clearly [End Page 71] conveys this in the following passage: "The walls press us into each other and toward the only space left open to us: UP. The place from which that thing with feathers descends. We go to catch and sing the sun in flight. … We are detained but not defeated." These are powerful and empowering words from someone who, despite deep contrition and change, knows he will never leave prison and quite likely might be executed there. Other standouts include Chicano writer and artist Paul S. Sedillo's nonfiction essay "Cultural Time Roads" with its New Mexico–based insights on the connections between colonialism, racism, and the contemporary prison system; Jason Hawkins's nonfiction memoir piece "Before the Virus," which compassionately reflects on creativity and despair in a South Texas prison in light of his friend's suicide attempt; and Heather Jarvis's nonfiction memoir piece "Frozen Pancakes," which details her descent into drug addiction in an attempt to be the perfect single mother, her in-prison sobriety and self-improvement, and her plans to be her imperfect yet honest self with her daughters when she gets out. Also notable are Austin Holland's fiction piece "White-Hot/Black-Hot," in which a veteran shares his insights on the physical and emotional deaths caused by the US occupation of Iraq; Sheryl L. Nelms's poem "The Blues," a meditation on both the color and state of mind; Timothy Burke's poem "Momento Mori," a sparse, imagistic account of the glasses...

Gramsci’s “Modern Prince” and the Contingencies of Political Struggle

Abstract The Gramscian proposition of the “modern Prince”, like most of the concepts elaborated by Gramsci in the Prison Notebooks, has always been open to interpretative controversy. These exegetical controversies stem from two main factors: the fragmentary nature of the prison writings and the method of work employed by Gramsci. The aim of this article is to apply the methodological perspective of “social contextualism” to the understanding of the Gramscian concept of the modern Prince. There is a threefold advantage in applying this methodology to the reading of Gramsci’s political theory: 1) it allows one to grasp the unitarity between theory and practice in Gramscian political elaboration, linking the militant Gramsci with the theoretical Gramsci (the pre-prison and prison writings); 2) it allows one to identify how the theory of the party present in the “Lyon Theses” was maintained and further developed in the Prison Notebooks; and, consequently, iii) it further allows one to identify the proposition of the modern Prince as the most advanced development of a theory of the party that had already been conceived by Gramsci in the period before his imprisonment.

'Hoe zal een toekomstige generatie verder leven?'. Bonhoeffers bezinning op deze vraag gedurende zijn gevangenisjaren

After ten years of life under Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes that ‘the ultimately responsible question is how a coming generation is to go on living’. This article argues that the answer to this question is present in Bonhoeffer’s prison writings, letters, literary work and theological essays, and traces on how that answer directs his thought, and what it implies for the interpretation of his theological thinking during this period, including his letters on the ‘non-religious interpretation’ of the Gospel and the Christian tradition.

Activist Bibliography as Abolitionist Pedagogy in the American Prison Writing Archive

Activist Bibliography as Abolitionist Pedagogy in the American Prison Writing Archive

Review: Utopian Ruins: A Memorial Museum of the Mao Era, by Jie Li

Review: <i>Utopian Ruins: A Memorial Museum of the Mao Era</i>, by Jie Li

Motherlands

Motherlands Su Hwang (bio) The limits of woman, human. Everything put to the test. Antigone, a new mother,asunder some heavy ledger to taint and tear you, make you caveand kin my sister of unbearable splendor sun yung shin [End Page 69] Su Hwang Su Hwang is a poet, activist, stargazer, and the author of Bodega (Milkweed Editions), which received the 2020 Minnesota Book Award in poetry and was named a finalist for the 2021 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Born in Seoul, Korea, she was raised in New York and then called the Bay Area home before transplanting to the Midwest. A recipient of the Jerome Hill Fellowship in Literature, she is a teaching artist with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and is the cofounder of Poetry Asylum. Copyright © 2022 University of Nebraska Press

Buttigieg’s Method

Joseph Buttigieg’s introduction to his uncompleted edition of the Prison Notebooks is one of the best things ever written about Gramsci’s prison writings. The last section reproduces, with minimal changes, Buttigieg’s 1990 article “Gramsci’s Method,” and it has the same title. That title, however, is misleading, since what Buttigieg reconstructs is not so much Gramsci’s method of writing the notebooks as his own process, as editor, of reading them, which is far from being a factual report of how Gramsci “actually wrote.” It involves, instead, a set of interpretive hunches, which in turn presuppose a prior knowledge of all of Gramsci’s texts, without which it would not be possible to make the connections he makes between different topics or to rank them, to identify some – such as the critique of positivist sociology and the idea of the philosophy of praxis – as more important, more overarching than others. Symptomatic here is Buttigieg’s use of an apparently insignificant note, of just twenty words, “L’ossicino di Cuvier,” generally overlooked by Gramsci scholars, as a point of entry into a set of interconnected notes and from there to the whole intellectual edifice of the Prison Notebooks.

Moderno principe e cesarismo nella filosofia politica di Gramsci

The essay aims to analyse the relationship between ‘Caesarism’ and ‘modern prince’ in the Prison Notebooks. Capitalising on a historical-philological investigation of Gramsci’s prison writings, I intend to show how these two categories share a common political-conceptual background. Furthermore, the investigation of this theoretical junction illuminates the political reflection of Gramsci as a whole, by highlighting its being always in progress.

Prison Writings in Switzerland (19-20th Centuries)

Prison Writings in Switzerland (19-20th Centuries)

Maulana Zafar Ali Khan's prison writings &amp; "Sitara-e-Subah

Maulana Zafar Ali Khan's prison writings &amp; "Sitara-e-Subah

Incipient Fascism: Black Radical Perspectives

The sordid twilight of the Trump presidency raised the stakes of the debate on fascism. While much of the discussion has been magnetised by the legitimacy of analogies with the 1930s, this article argues that a rich and complex tradition of Black radical critique of right-wing authoritarianism provides a vital resource for thinking through the problem of US fascism beyond analogy – beginning with the DuBoisian insight that a racial fascism forged by chattel slavery and settler-colonialism anticipated the ascendancy of European fascisms. The article homes in on Black radical theories of fascism developed in the wake of the movements and uprisings of the 1960s and the US state’s intensification of its repressive and carceral apparatus. Exploring the theoretical insights generated in the prison writings of George Jackson and Angela Y. Davis, it challenges the widely held belief that the 1970s stood as the nadir of theorisation of fascism, its degradation into mere political insult. Instead, with particular emphasis on Davis’s articulation of an incipient or preventive fascism, it investigates the theoretical consequences of the differential experience of fascism across axes of racialisation and reflects on the pertinence of Black radical theories of fascism to our current moment of recombinant White supremacy.

The Challenges of a Kurdish Ecofeminist Perspective: Maria Mies, Abdullah Öcalan, and the Praxis of Jineolojî

ABSTRACT Ecology, along with women’s liberation and radical democracy, is one of the major pillars of Democratic Confederalism, a new political paradigm developed by the Kurdish Freedom Movement through the voice of the PKK’s leader, Abdullah Öcalan. Scholars attribute the greening of the Kurdish agenda to the impact that the founder of Social Ecology, Murray Bookchin, had on Öcalan’s ideology. Without denying the veracity of this argument, the following article analyzes the influence that Maria Mies, a pioneer of socialist ecofeminism, had on the philosophical elaboration of Öcalan. Examining the theses exposed in his prison writings with the most relevant aspects of Mies’ thought, this article shows the limits, challenges, and strategic use of the Kurdish ecofeminist perspective. This approach provides an original understanding of the emancipatory horizon opened up by Democratic Confederalism and particularly by Jineolojî, the “science of women and life,” spearheaded by the Kurdish Women’s Movement since 2011.

Typing Corrections: An Exploration &amp; Performance of Prison (Type)Writing

This article has been written about, and with, the Swintec 2410cc, the typewriter model approved for incarcerated writers in the State of Nebraska and many other prison systems across the United States. The co-authors, one of whom is currently serving a six year sentence, relate their personal experiences with typewriters and typists as well as connect functions described in the Swintec User Manual to issues in community literacy. The "Left/Right Margin" function reflects some of the institutional and material constraints prison typewriters face; "Impression Control" invites us to think about the forces and functions governing representations of prison and prison writing; this writing tool and the environment for which it was designed, demand one submit to the process of "Corrections". Finally, this typewritten performance models and attempts to enact critical literacy and social justice from within and beyond the typewriter's cage.