Whitecross, R (2025) Disparate narrative worlds - women’s prison writing as narratives of haunting. In: Narrative Matters 2025 - Disparate Narrative Worlds: Crisis, Conflict, and the Possibility of Hope, 13-16 May 2025, The American University of Paris and Université Paris Cité, Paris, France.
Abstract
Rosa Whitecross’ paper builds on Presser and Sandberg’s charge (2015, p. 1) that ‘narratives are central to human existence’ because, through the construction of lives as stories, connections are forged ‘among experiences, actions, and aspirations’. The question follows of how can we forge connections—with the aim to inspire social and structural change—based on actions, experiences and aspirations when the narratives of incarcerated women and their prison writing do not feature in the wider cultural landscape of writing? She will theorise women’s prison writing as narratives of haunting. Kirss (2013, p. 21) writes that ‘what haunts is not subject to conscious memory’, but instead that it returns unbidden ‘personified or atmospheric’. The evocative writing of women in prison considers this question of ‘where is the “place” where the ghostly lies harboured, and from whence does it return?’ (Kirss, 2013, p. 21), particularly in relation to El Saadawi’s (2002) prison writing that muses on the experience of imprisonment as a death.
| Item Type: | Conference or Workshop Item (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Note: | This conference paper was presented as part of a panel entitled 'Writing Prison Narratives'. The panel took as its focus three separate projects undertaken in the UK and the US, documenting the lives and experiences of incarcerated women and men. |
| Divisions: | School of Sciences |
| Date Deposited: | 16 Jan 2026 11:44 |
| Last Modified: | 16 Jan 2026 11:45 |
| URN: | https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/17528 |
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