Project description
An actor-centred account of Syria’s prisons
It has been widely reported by human rights groups that Bashar al-Assad’s government arbitrarily arrested thousands of Syrians between the late 1970s and early 2000s. These prisoners, held indefinitely in large group cells, included government opponents from the secular left and Muslim Brotherhood, as well as their relatives and associates. The EU-funded SYRASP project will study the conditions in the prisons by collecting the first corpus of written and oral prison narratives. Specifically, it will interview former prisoners, incarcerated for at least a year, accused of affiliation with the left or the Muslim Brotherhood. It will also study poetry, scripture and folklore. The overall aim of the project is to create a human-centred account of Syria’s prisons in the context of the country’s political culture at its core.
Objective
SYRASP combines textual analysis of Syrian prison literature with interviews on narrative and memory among former political prisoners. Between the late 1970s and early 2000s, the Assad regime imprisoned thousands of opponents from the secular left and Muslim Brotherhood, as well as their family members and associates. Political prisoners were held indefinitely in large group cells, often exclusively with members of their parties. By addressing their prison narratives as a diverse set of oral and print practices, the study traces the distinctive political cultures that took shape in and around prisons under the Assad regime, which remains in power under Bashar al-Assad (2000-present).The study’s interdisciplinary method will yield the first corpus of written and oral prison narrative. The primary literature under study consists of memoirs, poetry, stories, and essays by former political prisoners, as well as social media posts, unpublished manuscripts, and blogs. The interview population comprises male and female former prisoners who were held in group cells in Syria, accused of affiliation with the left or the Muslim Brotherhood, for a minimum of 1 year. Oral practices under study include formal techniques (e.g. recitation of poetry, scripture, folklore), memorisation of information on the cell population, and accounts of prison events. Interviews will use oral history methods. By treating prison narrative as a multi-modal system comprising print, orality, and sound, SYRASP traces networks of expression and contention that emerge from prisons, connecting lives on the inside to dissension and depictions of prison in Syrian letters. It uses the lens of publics to describe the forms of collective memory and belonging that Syrian prisoners created under harrowing conditions. It thus offers an actor-centred account of prisons at the centre, not the margins, of Syrian political culture.
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Funding Scheme
ERC-STG - Starting GrantHost institution
14193 Berlin
Germany