Analysing White Walls and Silent Voices from Narges Mohammadi's White Torture

Abstract

The book White Torture presents the prison narratives of fourteen Iranian women. These women strongly uphold feminist agendas, progressive ideologies, and resist the oppressive regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Their political, religious, and cultural beliefs conflict with the repressive ideologies of Iran. The government crushed their spirit by imprisoning and subjecting them to various forms of torture. This torture extended beyond physical abuse to architectural isolation. Most were held in Evin Prison under the authority of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence. The form of torture was unique; the prison was structured in a way that the women prisoners experienced only white walls and deadly silence in the cells. This led the prisoners to mental harassment. The prison authorities extended torture to emotional blackmail, physical abuse, medical neglect, absence of hygienic facilities, harassment of family members and so on. The architectural design of pale white walls and isolation of prison wards disturbed their normal life even after serving the prison sentence. This paper aims to critically analyse the function of spatial design, sensory deprivation and other mechanisms of state-inflicted violence used against women prisoners.