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VULNERABILITY AND RECOGNITION IN SYRIAN PRISON LITERATURE

Abstract Connecting the stories of human rights violations perpetrated by the Syrian regime against the children of Darʿa in March 2011 to decades of writings about political detention in Syria, this article argues that particular works of Syrian prison literature (adab al-sujūn) articulate a poetics of recognition that both reaffirms and challenges the foundational dependency on political recognition in human rights theory. By focusing on narrative scenes of recognition and misrecognition, I contend that these texts, much like the stories of the children of Darʿa, depict different forms of acute human vulnerability. In doing so, they offer a mode of sentimental education that evokes readers’ empathy and awareness of human suffering. Yet such texts also demonstrate, in allegorical form, how the foundational reliance on political recognition in human rights regimes can limit their efficacy.