Reading the prison narrative: An examination of selected Southern African Post - 2000 writings

Abstract

This study examines a selection of Post-2000 Southern African prison narratives. It primarily focuses on fictional narratives that were written in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Little critical attention has been given to fictional prison writing in Southern Africa considering that much critical attention has been accorded to autobiographies by political prisoners. The demise of autobiographical writing has led to the rise in the production of prison novels, hence the need to examine this evolving genre. This study is driven by the need to examine the construction and representation of subjectivity in the selected narratives. It explores how the prison is experienced, by paying attention to issues of criminality, identity, gender and power. This study begins with the examination of criminality and the representation of the function of the prison in Red Ink by Angela Makholwa (2007), followed by the exploration of gender and identity issues in A Book of Memory by Petina Gappah (2015). It further examines how the notions of power and counter-discourse are portrayed in The Violent Gestures of Life by Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho (2014). This study employs the method of close textual analysis of the selected narratives. It is underpinned by post-colonial theory, the paradigm of the Panopticon which is foregrounded by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison (1977) and Daniel Roux’s perceptions of the prison in Doing Time under Apartheid (2013). This study contends that notions of detention and imprisonment continue to play a central role in the production of selfhood in literary works. It is clear in the study that the prison is used as an institution to critique different phenomena regarding the prison experience. In this study, I clearly show that the selected narratives can be read as platforms for resistance against social ills that prevail in the post-apartheid/post-colonial society. I also argue that there is a thin line between fiction and non-fiction, apartheid/colonial and post-apartheid/post-colonial prison systems. The narratives I explore in this study reveal more continuities than discontinuities from the apartheid/colonial prisons.