The subversive pencil: writing, prison and political status. (January 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Gordon, Avery F.
• Other Names: Gordon Avery F. guest-editor.; Hoad Neville guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Race & class. Volume 60:Number 3(2019)
• Page Start: 14
• Page End: 24
• Publication Date: 2019-01
• Subjects: Barbara Harlow -- Barred: women, writing and political detention -- Guantánamo -- human rights -- political struggle -- prison literature; Race relations -- Periodicals; Social classes -- Developing countries -- Periodicals; 305.8
• DOI: 10.1177/0306396818810986
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0306-3968

Abstract

The article offers a personal recollection of Barbara Harlow and her impact on the author's intellectual development. Harlow's book Barred: women, writing, and political detention (1992) and her later writings on the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay are revisited for their contemporary significance. The author situates Harlow as a unique literary critic whose sustained work was conjunctural reading, translating and writing across geopolitical and disciplinary borders; her interventions being made in commitment to her honed liberatory agendas and visions.