Politics imprisoned: Political prisoners and the making of democracy, decolonization, and human rights in postwar France, 1945-1975

"Politics Imprisoned: Political Prisoners and the Making of Democracy, Decolonization, and Human Rights in Postwar France, 1945-1975" argues that the fight to define and claim political prisoner status was part and parcel of a larger effort to redraw the boundaries of civic participation and state efficacy amid the massive political restructuring that France experienced in the first thirty years after World War Two. Investigating the story of the political prisoner category from 1945 to 1975, this dissertation follows the mobilizations of multiple carceral actors, including WII collaborators and postwar far-right actors; anti-Vietnam War protestors and conscientious objectors; anticolonial nationalists from Madagascar and Algeria; and prisoner rights' intellectuals and activists activated by the protest movements of May 1968. Positioning these actors' claims for political prisoner rights alongside legal operations of the French state, this study traces how debates over defining "political prisoner" illuminated broader operations in the reconstruction of democracy in the 1940s and 1950s, the deconstruction of empire in the 1950s and 1960s, and the deployment of a new discourse of human rights in the 1970s. In each of these moments, state actors and political activists clashed over the "political prisoner" category—both what it meant and who could access it. From these clashes, I argue, we can see how fractious interactions between law and political activism were central to redefining French state and society in these transformational years. Focused on political prisoner activisms and changes to penal law, this study has broader implications for helping us appreciate interactions between political action from above and below. This dissertation explores what happens when top-down state action and bottom-up civic protest meet in the middle—a messy common ground of concessions, continued struggle, and political agency eked out of repressive conditions. At its core, this study argues that postwar French democracy, decolonization, and human rights were made, in part, through these contests between activists and the state over the meaning of "political prisoner." These contests operated in cyclical patterns that generated both expansions and contractions in imprisoned actors' ability to gain access to rights and privileges accorded to political prisoners. At their most restrictive, state denials of political prisoner status went hand in hand with condoned prisoner abuse, particularly for those imprisoned who were colonial subjects, non-citizens, and people of color. In their most expansive moments, the protest actions of imprisoned political actors generated significant legal change to the political prisoner category. Overtime, these activist-led expansions pushed the state toward a recognition of "prisoner rights," a new battleground of similar debate that continues to this day. This dissertation's focus on defining the political prisoner category from 1945 to 1975 thus helps us see how interactions between activists and the state were crucial in this one moment in the making of democracy, decolonization, and human rights. In addition to helping us better understand this historical period, this finding offers us one way of seeing how change can happen within and through democracy—a lesson still pressing in our time.