the island by athol fugard pdf converter

This book offers an original analysis and theorization of the biopolitics of development in the postcolonial present, and draws significantly from the later works of Michel Foucault on biopolitics. The article offers a contribution to the critical vocabulary of the play whilst interrogating the praxis of modern biopolitics.

Prisoners attempt to regain their freedom and agency irrespective of their living circumstances – a figurative resistance to biopolitical violence. How the incarcerated body is mobilised as the focal point of struggle towards apartheid laws, and how it is linked to decolonisation is also examined. This article argues that South African black prisoners were in a prolonged period of oppression and offensive restrictions, and in a sphere outside the normal law, thus in a status of Muselmann. Despite the scholarly attention on the play, it is scarcely read through Foucault’s and Agamben’s biopolitical lenses, coupled with Nelson Mandela’s prison testimonies, and this is where this reading departs from the existing scholarship. The play provides significant theatrical testimonies of political prisoners and incarceration by demonstrating corporeal and psychological dehumanisation processes in prisons during the apartheid era in South Africa.

The literal translation for Hodoshe is 'carrion fly' (as mentioned in the play), a large green fly.This article interrogates the status of incarceration, and prisoners’ rights or the lack thereof, as represented in South African dramatist Athol Fugard’s Anglophone play-text, The Island (1993) – co-authored by John Kani and Winston Ntshona, and premiered in 1973 – with a view to shedding light on incarceration and biopolitical violence. He is a symbol of the apartheid state and racist rule. Hodoshe, an unseen character: he is referred to and represented by the sound of a prison whistle.This was a serious crime, as the passbook was used to segregate and control the South African people. Winston, we find out later was imprisoned for burning his passbook in front of the police.John has been imprisoned for belonging to a banned organization.The final image is of John and Winston, chained together once more, running hard as the siren wails. I go now to my living death, because I honored those things to which honor belongs'. After John-as-Creon sentences Winston-as-Antigone to be walled up in a cave for having defied him and done her duty towards her dead brother, Winston pulls off Antigone's wig and yells 'Gods of Our Fathers! My Land! My Home! Time waits no longer. The final scene is their performance of Antigone.

The island by athol fugard pdf converter