Reconceptualising the Female Political Prisoner: 100 Years of Women's Imprisonment

这个项目旨在改变我们对女性政治犯的观念。它将重点关注西班牙佛朗哥独裁时期（1939-1975年）、阿根廷和智利军事独裁时期（分别为1976-1983年、1973-1990年）以及今天美国和英国的移民和海关执法局（ICE）和移民驱逐中心（Immigration Removal centre）的监禁妇女所写的监狱文本。我将分析小说，如唐娜·胡安娜·希门尼斯的《夜晚的夜晚》（1978），诗歌，如安吉尔斯·加西亚·马德里的《爱的夜晚》（1977）和维罗妮卡·德·内格里的《定义》（1992），集体历史，如托马萨·奎瓦斯的《Presas》（2005）和选集《难民故事》（2016），以及法律证词，如希拉·卡西迪的《智利的折磨》（1976）。这一系列文本将使我能够追溯女性政治犯在过去一个世纪的各种政治局势中的形象，并将为分析妇女关于其性别监禁经历的证词提供基础。我特别感兴趣的是通过对证词文本的理论方法来研究这些监狱文本，以对自己的经历进行真实见证的想法为中心，我打算在这项研究中汇集历史和文学学科的概念，以便创建一个新的理论框架，通过这个框架来分析女性政治犯的第一人称叙述。包括英国和美国也将使我能够解决当今全球移民危机所提出的问题，在这种危机中，妇女的身体和妇女的证词经常被拘留和沉默。这个计划将以我目前的硕士论文为基础，Mujeres de Ventas女性在佛朗哥监狱中的写作，探讨西班牙内战后Ventas监狱中女性政治犯的文学创作。本研究聚焦于佛朗哥时期西班牙的监狱写作和证词，特别是将女性监狱文本确立为一种越轨的文学实践，质疑当时占主导地位的社会和政治等级制度（Harlow, 1987）。因此，这将为我进一步扩大对女性监狱文学的研究提供必要的理论基础。在我的本科论文中，我也探讨了历史记忆的问题，研究了西班牙内战的集体记忆。我已经与几个潜在的研究合作伙伴取得了联系，包括英国组织“正义之旅”（M4C文化合作伙伴），我希望与他们合作开展这个项目。

This project aims to transform the way in which we conceptualise the female political prisoner. It will focus on prison texts produced by incarcerated women from the Franco dictatorship in Spain (1939-1975), the military dictatorships of Argentina and Chile (1976-1983, 1973-1990, respectively), and ICE and Immigration Removal centres in the present day USA and UK. I will analyse novels such as Dona Juana Jimenez's Desde la noche y la niebla (1978), poetry such as Angeles Garcia Madrid's Al quiebro de mis espinas (poemas desde la carcel) (1977) and Veronica de Negri's Definiciones (1992), collective histories such as Tomasa Cuevas's Presas (2005) and the anthology Refugee Tales (2016), and legal testimonies such as Sheila Cassidy's Tortured in Chile (1976). This range of texts will allow me to trace the figure of the female political prisoner in various political situations throughout the past century, and will provide the basis from which to analyse women's testimony of their gendered experience of imprisonment. I am particularly interested in examining these prison texts through theoretical approaches to the testimony text, centred upon the idea of bearing authentic witness to one's own experiences, and I intend for this research to draw together concepts from the disciplines of both history and literature in order to create a new theoretical framework through which to analyse the first-person accounts of female political prisoners. The inclusion of the UK and USA will also allow me to address questions raised by today's global immigration crisis, within which women's bodies and women's testimony are often detained and silenced.This proposed project will build upon my current Masters thesis, Mujeres de Ventas Women's Writing in Franco's Prisons, which explores the literary production of the female political prisoners of Ventas Prison after the Spanish Civil War. This study focuses on prison writing and testimony in Franco's Spain, specifically on establishing the female prison text as a transgressive literary practice that calls into question the dominant social and political hierarchies of its time (Harlow, 1987). It will therefore provide me with the theoretical foundation needed to expand further my research into female prison literature. I also explored questions of historical memory in my undergraduate dissertation, which examined the collective Spanish memory of the Civil War. I have already made contact with several potential research partners, including the UK organisation Journey to Justice (an M4C cultural partner), with whom I hope to work on this project.