| This project focuses on the struggle of women prisoners in Stalinist Poland to resist the image of a prisoner and reconstruct themselves in conditions that aimed at crushing the individual. The women prisoners used words to (re)create themselves during interrogations; they used their senses to orient themselves in the spatial organization of the prison and create a feeling of security; and they used their physicality as a reminder of their gender identity and to exercise pressure on the authorities. Finally, they attempted to create a semblance of normalcy in the cells and create a communal cultural, social, religious, and educational life drawing on the habits and cultural heritage they had acquired in freedom. They adapted to the prison world, but they also attempted to adapt this world to their own needs. Their struggle took the form of a dialogue between the oppressive prison conditions and individual attempts to experience as creatively as possible a world designed to debase. This study provides insight into how power operates on individuals, how it affects and changes them, and finally how an individual may slowly emancipate from power. In this sense, the stories of prisoners are part of a broader twentieth-century philosophical reflection on totalitarianism and the confrontation with terror.;The dissertation is organized around a handful of theoretical issues. The first is the issue of resistance: namely, to what extent can the prisoner's activities and attempts at self-refashioning be defined as resistance? This leads to a discussion about the categories of individual identity that women in prison not only defended but ultimately manipulated. Furthermore, the concept of gender is essential for this dissertation, namely the role gender, women's understanding of femininity, and women's bodies played in prison. Finally, I discuss the concepts of everyday history in analyzing the realities of prison life. |
