Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Assata Shakur’s Self-writing : Torture, Authorisation and Liberation

Abstract

The study conceptualises self-writing through the lived experiences of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Assata Shakur. The specific focus is on three themes, namely: torture, authorisation, and liberation. These themes are discussed through narrative and thematic analysis that aims at emphasising how the text can be analysed through meaning, symbols and patterns. It is through torture, authorisation, and liberation that the significance of self-writing as a mode of writing engages and facilitates the narrative accounts of Shakur and Madikizela-Mandela. This thesis provides a background of the concept of self-writing and it sets a context of how the concept evolved based on different interpretations by scholars. Foucault (1997) as a key scholar who developed the concept of self-writing highlights that it is about writing the self to freedom and it is an act of being self-intimate. Mbembe (2001) builds on Foucault but presents a different mode of writing. He proposes self-writing through African modes of writing, which he then theorises as African subjectivity. The conceptions and observations of Foucault and Mbembe are fundamental as a point of departure in how self-writing is conceptualised in this thesis. The underpinning similarity of both conceptualisations is centred on how self-writing advocates for the self-attaining a sense of being. Thus, in this, thesis the notion of attaining being emerges as a point of departure in how self-writing is analysed in this thesis. Self-writing justifies as to why the narratives of Shakur and Madikizela-Mandela cannot only be reduced to autobiographical works, but rather expand into texts that have political significance. It also explains the position of the hold, simply defined it is a position in which the black body exists within confinement. It is a captured space that is both in and out of prison which the black body finds itself within. The concept derives from the work of Sharpe (2016). The discussions in this thesis reveal the interconnectedness of the experiences of Shakur and Madikizela-Mandela encounters. Moreover, they illustrate how self-writing is illuminated through political resistance. Self-writing in this thesis is re-imagined as a concept that propagates a political imaginary that is not only for the individual self to attain consciousness, but it is a communal political imaginary. Ultimately, this thesis illustrates how self-writing is a mode of writing that not only occurs through textual evidence but it transcends to a way of life. Additionally, self-writing is a continuous process that awakens one’s consciousness and consequently that of others.