Remnants of carcerality and fascism in contemporary literature from Equatorial Guinea
| Author | Anna Mester |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221130367 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue: African Penal Histories in Global Perspective |
Remnants of carcerality and
fascism in contemporary
literature from Equatorial
Guinea
Anna Mester
University of Michigan, USA
Abstract
From 1939 to 1968, the Spanish territory in the Gulf of Guinea suffered from a double,
imperial and fascist oppression under the Franco regime. While colonialism officially
ended in 1968, the promise of independence perished as newly elected Francisco
Macías Nguema —inspired by Francoism—became increasingly violent and repressive
of political dissent. Colonial Black Beach prison became the site for incarceration, tor-
ture, and executions as Macías ruthlessly retaliated against political dissent. I analyze two
contemporary novels, Poderes de la tempested (2004) by Donato Ndongo Bidyogo and
Autorretrato con un infiel (2007) by José Fernando Siale Djangany, to show the prison—
the edifice and its carceral reverberations in society—as the nexus of the double, fascist
and imperial violence that persists and is renegotiated in the aftermath colonialism. From
the metaphor of the prison, I explore the legacy of Francoist violence in post-colonial
Equatorial Guinea that has been variedly characterized as colonialism’s residual legacy
or the perpetuation of afro-fascism or a self-inflicted colonialism. I wish to complicate
the historical cause-and-effect. I reread these texts from a historical and literary per-
spective focusing on representations of prisons and carceral societies, while engaging
with the co-implications of fascism and imperialism in Spanish and Equatorial Guinean
history.
Keywords
carcerality, post-colonialism, Equatorial Guinea, literature
Corresponding author:
Anna Mester, University of Michigan, 1071 Palmer Commons, 100 Washtenaw Ave, Ann Arbor, MI 48109,
USA.
Email: amester@umich.edu
Special Issue: African Penal Histories in Global Perspective
Punishment & Society
2022, Vol. 24(5) 843–856
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/14624745221130367
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