Presenter
Periyasamy Dheebika - Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, IndiaPanel
99 – Registers of discipline and resistance: politics of imprisonment in south asian prisonsAbstract
This paper critically examines how prison masculinities are constructed in this setting, framed through the lens of embodied memories and affect. The novel presents male prisoners who once occupied various ranks within the LTTE hierarchy, now stripped of their roles and subjected to forms of torture that target their bodies, masculinities, and identities. Drawing on Foucault’s theory of power and the body, alongside affect theory, this analysis interrogates how the embodied experiences of torture and imprisonment produce a distinct form of masculinity marked by vulnerability, humiliation, and survival. The prison, as a heterotopic space, not only contradicts the notion of a war’s end but also produces a continuous cycle of violence that reshapes the prisoners’ subjectivities.
