Gendered Representations of Apartheid: The Women’s Jail Museum at Constitution Hill

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which women are represented and remembered at The Women's Jail at Constitution Hill museum, a former women's jail that was used to incarcerate women during apartheid in Johannesburg, South Africa. Based on fieldwork at the museum, this study examines how the memory of the former prisoners and of the apartheid regime is shaped and narrated at this site. Situating our analysis within the context of the collective memory of apartheid, we examine how the museum uses artifacts and objects to depict both the specific forms of gendered dehumanization that women experienced at the jail, as well as their journeys to incarceration as a result of discriminatory apartheid laws. We also examine the absence of torture memory and references to hierarchical structures and interactions within the jail itself, noting that these were important dynamics of prison life that are not represented in the museum. This research presents a content and visual analysis of how the use of images and artifacts may illuminate and/or silence specific memories of degradation and humiliation in a museum space.

Museum as geopolitical entity: Toward soft combat

“…In fact, this opaque link is part of what they find dissatisfying about the museums, that although they are productive of powerful carceral atmospheres for the visitor, their larger purpose remains vague and even dubious (cf. Bonnes & Jacobs, 2017). This is particularly true when the museum turns the suffering inflicted on the prisoners into a consumable object by way of simulation (Turner & Peters, 2015, p. 321; also see Miller & Del Casino, 2018 on "negative simulation").…”

Constructing Silence

“…In this way, the history of every South African lives here." 237 Most importantly, it houses the Women's Jail, one of the country's first successful contemporary memorialization to women and one of the only sites to memorialize women's jailing, torture and gendered violence that women were subjected to 238. Considered part of the post-apartheid symbolic reparations, Constitution Hill is paid for by public funds and was developed by the City of Johannesburg's Development Agency (JDA) in collaboration with Gauteng province as part of the national Legacy Project 239.…”