Abjection and Identity in Al Khiam Detention Camp: A Case for Literature as Transitional Justice

ABSTRACT This article interrogates how women’s prison literature can be a means of intervention in transitional societies where traditional transitional justice mechanisms have not proven successful. Through readings of Soha Bechara’s Resistance: My Life for Lebanon (2003) and Nawal Qasim Baidoun’s Memoirs of a Militant: My Years in Al Khiam Prison (2022), the article argues that women’s prison writings, written from a place of abjection, can serve to soften identities hardened by a Civil War and offer truth exposure when no alternative exists. I consider this literature, specifically that of Lebanese women subjected to Israeli tactics of torture and detainment, to be an individualized tool toward justice-achieving mechanisms that can indicate the way forward for both nation and individual.