Inside/Outside: Representing Prison Lives after Apartheid

A striking feature of the post-apartheid era is the demise of prison life writing: the prison narrative, once a central pillar of South African autobiographical writing, abruptly moved to an almost-invisible periphery after the demise of apartheid. This article discusses two striking exceptions to this trend, namely Jonny Steinberg's book The Number and two photographic exhibitions by the South African artist Mikhael Subotzky titled Die Vier Hoeke (The Four Corners') and Umjiegwana (Outside'). The article focuses specifically on the relationship between prison time and the idea of a national history, and claims that the South African prison serves as a potent example of the way national, global, local and institutional time meet in a unique formation, a space of contradictions and multiple temporal points of reference.