Witness narratives in context: Analysing the political prison writings of Graciliano Ramos and José Luandino Vieira

When analysing literature produced in confinement or that concerns the experience of reclusion of a writer, context plays an essential role. In fact, not only is this kind of literature generally produced as a response to the writer’s incarceration – which takes place in a specific historical, political and social context – but the very form of the text is determined by contextual factors. However, renowned literary critics have defended that a context-oriented approach to literature is obsolete and it denies readers a more intimate and immediate connection with literary texts. This argument leaves aside the problem of how we should consider texts that originate from historical experiences (diaries, memoirs, biographies and autobiographies, etc.) and, what is more, from historical experiences of political violence. In these cases, is it possible (or ethical) to overtly disregard the context? To show how crucial context is in the textual and theoretical analysis of texts related to the experience of confinement, I would like to bring here some examples taken from Memórias do cárcere and Papéis da prisão, respectively the prison memoirs by Brazilian novelist Graciliano Ramos, and the philological edition of the notebooks kept by Angolan writer José Luandino Vieira during his imprisonment under the Portuguese colonial regime. I will examine these texts as examples of witness narratives, arguing that they should be read and interpreted considering their historical and political contexts and their material conditions of production.