Prison Sentences: Spaces of Liberation in Arab Prison Writing

Spatial and temporal motifs predominate throughout the extensive corpus of Arabic prison writing. However, far from establishing the prison as an exceptional space, and periods of imprisonment as “time outside time,” this paper argues that modern Arabic prison literature tends instead to blur the distinction between “inside” and “outside” prison space and time. In place of a rigid spatial demarcation, dramatically exemplified by images of towering, razor wire-tipped walls, Arabic prison writing consistently seeks to create continuity between the punishment meted out to those within the prison’s walls and the repression endured by those beyond it. Consequently, these texts figuratively expand the prison walls to encompass the nation space in its entirety while simultaneously establishing the prison space as microcosm. Crucially, however, the significance of this erosion of the distinction between inside and outside the prison space is heavily mediated by gender. Whereas male authors’ narratives tend to encompass the space beyond the prison into the prison space to metaphorize the nation-space as prison-like under repressive dictatorial rule, women’s prison narratives ironically juxtapose the misogyny and patriarchal repression experienced in putatively “free” spaces beyond the prison with the opportunity to solidarity, camaraderie, and even niches of agency afforded by the all-women’s prison space and its limited insulation from the predations of patriarchy beyond the prison walls.