The Prison Narratives of Assad's Syria: Voices, Texts, Publics

Project Information

SYRASP

Grant agreement ID: 851393

DOI

10.3030/851393

EC signature date 26 March 2020

Start date 1 April 2020

End date 30 September 2026

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 175 239,00

EU contribution

€ 1 175 239,00

Coordinated by

FORUM TRANSREGIONALE STUDIEN EV
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - SYRASP (The Prison Narratives of Assad's Syria: Voices, Texts, Publics)

Reporting period: 2023-04-01 to 2024-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

SYRASP documents and analyzes historical and contemporary narratives, images, and cultural, musical, and artistic practices that represent incarceration and forced disappearance under the Assad regime, which has ruled Syria since 1970. In close collaboration with Syrian prison writers, intellectuals, activists, and artists based in the European Union, SYRASP builds on the growing canon of Syrian prison literature and its associated scholarship. An interdisciplinary and collaborative project, SYRASP is poised at the intersection of academia and civil society, promoting the sharing and development of scientific practices with Syrian-led organizations in the contemporary diaspora. In so doing, SYRASP hones a new academic approach that foregrounds the changing meanings of Syrian prison narrative as a hub for debate on Syrian collective memory and shared political futures in Europe today.
The project draws on the methods of literary studies, as well as cultural anthropology (e.g. interviews, the study of material culture), data ethics, and the digital humanities (e.g. data collection and mapping). Across its research activities, SYRASP approaches prison literature as only one set of outcomes from a diverse and largely undocumented network of practices that began inside Syria’s prison cells in the 1980s and that live, in myriad forms, in Syria and the countries of its diaspora today. The practices of prison narrative span a range of actions, including memorizing stories and illegally harvesting paper from cigarette packs to write them down inside prison; creating and sharing YouTube testimonies, films, and podcasts about the imprisoned and disappeared in Syria; eliciting and circulating memories of imprisonment with others; engaging in protest around artistic installations outside Germany’s historic trial of Syrian regime officials in 2020; and creating archival websites and databases to store and share information on incarceration in Syria.
By treating prison narratives as mobile, multimedia, and constantly evolving practices, SYRASP explores how Syrians are using them today to bridge their political past in Syria, their lived present in Europe (including the fashioning of innovative imaginative relationships to memories and current events of political violence in Europe), and the horizon of a just future for Syrians.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Four years in, SYRASP has established itself as an innovative and collaborative space for the study of prison narrative, along with other forms of cultural and musical expression. Its ethical structures and practices are well-established, with ongoing engagement from both academic advisors and members of the Syrian prison field. SYRASP’s scientific progress and outputs are in a very good state. As hoped, the PI has become a trusted researcher for many individuals and organizations in the Syrian diasporic prison community, notably in Germany and France. The PI has taken numerous opportunities to develop relationships with a variety of interlocutors, from established activists to emerging writers.
Her collaboration with the Syrian artist Khaled Barakeh as co-curator of the 2022
exhibition “Design of Necessity,” in Copenhagen, Denmark, led to her co-writing an article and theatrical play with the artist. Most recently, Barakeh invited the PI to conceptualize, co-write, and edit a community-written publication on siege, prison, and survival practices in Syria. Also titled Design of Necessity, the book will be published open-access by coculture, with support from Impunity Watch, in late 2024.
The PI has been invited to collaborate with leading diasporic Syrian organizations that
are committed to knowledge production and activism on incarceration and forced
disappearance. The most significant of these is The Lab for the Study of Violence in Syria, which has invited her to co-design its ethical design and methodology for the gathering and storage of digital data on incarceration and other forms of violence. In this role, the PI promotes the sharing of current best practices in academia with rising and established Syrian activists. The PI has also been invited to join the consultative boards of organizations in the field like the MENA Prison Forum (Beirut), the Syrian artistic collective coculture (Berlin), and the Association for the Missing and Disappeared of Sednaya Prison (Gaziantep, Turkey).
These achievements stand alongside SYRASP’s scientific network-building and publications. In the former category, the PI built an international academic network through the two-year SYRASP working group, conducted monthly online on the topics of prison studies and the MENA and its diasporas after 2011. This working group brought together approximately 15 academics, students, and activists based in Europe, North America, and the MENA. In scientific publications, SYRASP’s PI has authored two peer-reviewed articles, a book review, and two public-facing, online essays; co-written an article with a Syrian artist that appeared in English, Arabic, and German; and co-edited a special journal issue on prison literature. The postdoctoral fellow Dr. Eylaf Bader Eddin, a Syrian academic researcher, has authored two articles (one in English, one in Arabic). As hoped in SYRASP’s ethical design, Dr. Bader Eddin’s time with the grant proved highly supportive for his career. After he ended his contract in July 2024, he began a tenure-track professorship in the United States.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

To bring SYRASP to scientific completion, the PI envisages the following tasks in the grant’s final stage.
1) Monograph:
The PI began the drafting of her monograph in fall 2023. This book, which represents a key scientific output for the grant, is based on literary and cultural analysis (e.g. of published texts, YouTube videos) and interviews with cultural producers and writers. Currently, 2 of 8 planned chapters are drafted. It will be submitted as an open-access publication to a university press with strong holdings in cultural and literary studies, such as Stanford University Press.

2) Other publications:
Alongside the monograph, the PI will publish at least two more peer-reviewed articles (on the making of print journals inside Syrian prisons; and environment and dust in Syrian prison literature). She also hopes to publish reflections on the ethics process of SYRASP and on her collaboration with the Syrian prison researcher Mr. Jaber Baker around the concept of “prison heritage”.

3) Methodologies of Mass Violence Workshop Series:
Following the completion of the SYRASP working group in summer 2024, the PI is leading a new workshop series through SYRASP’s collaboration with The Lab for the Study of Violence, and UMAM Documentation and Research, a Lebanese-German archiving organization. In workshops that will be held every 2 months for the remainder of SYRASP’s duration, the PI will invite researchers, activists, and organizations who are active in the field of documenting and archiving mass violence to share their methods and findings with SYRASP’s collaborative network. In addition to honing SYRASP’s scientific method and expanding its network beyond the academy, these workshops will lay the intellectual and institutional foundations for what lies after SYRASP: the establishment of a long-term, Syrian-led, and community-oriented archive to host testimonials of prison and other forms of violence.

SYRASP Logo