الفهرس 
IntroductionOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Even though political prison literature can be categorized under the ‘out-law genres,’ it presents a rich myriad of counter-narratives which not only direct scathing criticism against carceral systems, but also pinpoints the symbolic processes of power destabilization and self-advocacy. This thesis aims at bringing to light the dynamics of power and subversion present in Guantanamo prison literature. The thesis presents two case studies and explores the carceral world of the U.S. Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp through the eyes of an ex-Guantanamo detainee and an ex-Guantanamo prison guard. It provides a close reading and a thorough analysis of the thematic and stylistic manifestations of symbolic violence and the dynamic interplay of power and subversion present in Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s Guantanamo Diary (2017) (the restored edition) and Terry Collin Holdbrooks’ Traitor? (2013). The main objective of the present thesis is to explore how the Guantanamo prison writer can craft counter-narratives capable of subverting the post 9/11 War on Terror official discourse/narrative.
This study focuses primarily on dissecting the structure of the prison field and anatomizing the multifarious forms of violence, particularly symbolic violence, practiced not only on the Muslim Guantanamo detainee, but also on the American Guantanamo guard. The thesis draws mainly on Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical framework of symbolic violence and the field/habitus dyad. It aims at examining the processes of destabilizing the imposed silencing and isolating power of the prison field and ‘de-territorializing’ the captor/detainee relationship and how the latter symbolically reshuffles the structured prison hierarchy through the act of documentation and writing back. On this matter, the thesis incorporates Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson’s theoretical framework of analyzing non-fiction technicalities and elements and examines the forms of life narrative which the aforementioned selected texts represent, namely testimonial narratives, political apologies, conversion narratives, and counter-narratives. This is in addition to tracing how a detainee and a prison guard shift from marginalized peripheral positions to the center and metamorphose into intellectual dissidents who intervene in the political game of meaning making and the process of documenting history. In this regard, Julia Kristeva’s and Edward Said’s conceptions of the vocation and representation of the intellectual dissident are braided and applied to the prison writer.