ABSTRACT
Narratives of prison life are rife with innumerable atrocities. The prison system takes an even darker hue when chaperoned by despotic regimes. In Kenya, the prison was viewed as a depository of alleged dissidents of former president Moi’s regime. This chapter attempts a Foucauldian reading of Wahome Mutahi’s Jail Bugs and Three Days on the Cross. It interrogates the representation and the exercise of power within the confines of prison. The use of Michel Foucault’s terminology in discussing Mutahi’s carceral narratives is purposive. Focussing on Mutahi’s construction of credible depictions of life in the prison, the chapter demonstrates how bodies, which are according to Foucault the direct locus of power, are deployed and affected in the exercise of power and resistance and, as a consequence, how characters acquire important understandings of power. A Foucauldian reading aligns Mutahi’s fiction with protest narratives which decry violence through restoration/recuperation of the voices of the incarcerated/silenced/hidden bodies.
