interrogating narrative, terror, and the prison
reading Aftermath by Preti Taneja
Today we’re reading Aftermath by Preti Taneja, published by Transit Books in November 2021.
“Can we imagine a different world with the language we have?” (p. 131)
I read Aftermath in February 2023 and was moved by the imaginative weaving of craft essay, personal lament, and abolitionist reckoning. I love everything that Transit Books puts out, and I’m glad to finally be telling you about this book!
An Event
On November 29, 2019, at Fishmonger’s Hall in central London, Usman Khan attacked and stabbed multiple people. He killed two: Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt. Police officers then shot and killed him.
Khan was released from prison the year prior, and was meant to be attending a conference at Fishmonger’s Hall—an anniversary celebration of a program called Learning Together, run by Cambridge Institute of Criminology (now defunct). Khan attended a creative writing course as part of the program while he was incarcerated, and he was given special permission to attend the conference as an example of the program’s success.
Preti Taneja, the author of Aftermath, was his teacher.
The Teacher
The obvious juxtaposition of this story in the mainstream media—a former attendee of a rehabilitative program committing an “act of terror” on a day meant to celebrate the success of the program—made for an easy narrative. There’s an open-and-shut feeling to it all, the idea that criminals are criminals, and they should forever and always be locked away, for “our” safety.
“In moments of deep loss we become as children, trained to seek comfort in the old fairy tales: the fundamental good versus the fundamental evil. We crave redemptive hope of the hero’s journey in the old tradition of linear story from when we are born we are immersed in this the dominant mythic.” (p. 13)
But Aftermath gives us a different angle from the headlines. The author, Taneja, was Khan’s creative writing teacher. She believed in the power of creative work, in writing, in poetry. She believed that people living in prisons were, in fact, people. They were complex humans with lives and backstories and varied experiences and hardships and emotions.
She brings a difficult and nuanced perspective to a traumatic event. She was part of this program, the one that taught writing to Khan. And she knew the victims of the attack—Jones and Merritt were also working with Learning Together.
This book explores the grief, the anger, the confusion, and the shock of tragedy. But it also explores the grief, the anger, the confusion, and the shock of imprisonment.
An Interrogation
Taneja forces us to look at the reality of incarceration, and the communities who are most affected by the ever-widening system.
“As of March 2020, 27 percent of prisoners were from a BME background, compared with only 13 percent of the general population. Muslims now make up 12 percent of the prison population in England and Wales. People who identify as Black comprise only 3 percent of the general population but 13 percent of adult prisoners. Young Black adults are: twice as likely to receive a caution, 8.4 times more likely to receive a conviction, 1.5 times more likely to be sent to prison, given prison sentences that are 80 percent longer than those given to white young adults who commit similar offences.” (p. 63)
She furthers the seemingly-simple story by creating a new starting point. She tells us about Khan’s life, about why he was imprisoned. She tells us why someone like him might end up involved in what’s termed a “terrorist group”, and why communities like his are made vulnerable in a place like England.
Ultimately, she asks us to consider the limits of the prison industrial complex and its ability (or desire) to “rehabilitate”, or to keep us safe. What would a different system mean for people like Khan, and therefore, for people like his victims?
We cannot separate the grief for victims from the actions of perpetrators. We cannot pretend that what Khan did was “justified” because of his life story. But we can take these things in tandem—these human lives—and want something better for everyone.
The Narrative
Through a lyrical mix of essay, memoir, poetry, and fragmentary narrative, Taneja dismantles language and storytelling to reveal its inherent fictions. Linear narration, metaphors, word choice—we use these tools to construct myths disguised as truths.
“To create such categorical myths requires, in fact, a novelist’s skill. And your suspension of disbelief.” (p. 15)
For example: The violence of “terrorists” and “criminals” is often highlighted by the news, by politicians, by police and prisons; while the violence of the State, the police and prisons, is swept way, made invisible.
“Violence by states against others is a condition we have come to accept as normal. Violence in certain individuals is planted in us as extreme examples of a norm. But this normalization cannot be challenged without questioning how and who we trust. Trust where power truly lives. Not in violence.” (p. 115)
This narration—this decision of what we call violence and what we don’t—is a method of control rooted in language. Is the targeting, surveilling, harassment, detention, and imprisonment of human beings not an extreme form of violence? Why do we accept this?
And so Aftermath lives as an interrogation of craft and the prison, side-by-side, while contending with the grief of an event.
“In the immediate aftermath, I lost my faith in poetry, as possible compass, as chart. In the way that trust now resembled rhetoric.” (p. 107)
Abolition
“Abolition is a horizon, not an event. I see it behind me and in front as a curve.” (p. 133)
Abolition is a guiding force—a way of imagining, organizing, and collectivizing. Abolition asks that we see everyone as human, as equally deserving of care. It asks that we hold people accountable and redress harm in ways that do not cause more harm. It asks that we become proactive, and build systems that ultimately reduce harm.
“If the events of Fishmongers’ Hall leave me any way out of loss, it is recognition that the institutions of the atro-city, from which such violent harms arise, are homegrown, are no place of greater safety. We need new ways of holding ourselves as a society now, real transformations at the point of basic class, racial and gender justice. Restorative justice as a social transformation to heal community divisions caused by scarcities of so many kinds. Until perhaps forms of prison encoded in the curation of society, and prison itself are no longer considered a predicate for our ‘civilisation’ to continue.” (p. 137)
What would it have looked like if the systemic issues that shaped Khan’s life had already been addressed? If Khan had not been sent to a site of mass dehumanization (prison) to “prevent” potential “criminal activity”?
Prisons do not prevent harm, they cause harm.
We cannot guarantee that things would have been different, as we can guarantee no hypothetical or imaginary thing; and we cannot pretend that Khan had no part in his own actions. But we can refuse to use his story as justification for continuing the cycle, refuse to “use the attack as reason to strengthen the punitive vengeance of the state on its citizens”.
We can only do our best to make sure things are different in the future. We must hope. We must try.
“None of us alone will survive this. Our only chance is to dismantle it. I want this as I want love. Do not reconstruct it, do not reassemble it. Our only chance is to end it: I am talking about harm, the state’s harm, the harm that punishes us before we are born: for the idea of us, our races and religions, for our class and genders, for our audacity in breathing hope as children. I am talking about the dignity of a life, of every life.” (p. 132)
Thanks for reading today’s issue of Empty Head! More book reviews, Open Tabs, and other musings are on the way. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss anything.
I loved this Courtney! I’m absolutely going to have to buy it when I next see it - it sounds like a beautiful and necessary exploration of the systems of incarceration. Also! I have tomorrow they wont dare to murder us on my shelf! I haven’t got round to reading it yet but to hear how much you enjoyed it makes me more excited for when I do!