Issue Details: First known date: 2018... 2018 Behrouz Boochani and the Manus Prison Narratives : Merging Translation with Philosophical Reading
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'No Friend but the Mountains: Writing From Manus Prison is a literary work typed using mobile phone text messaging and produced after five years of indefinite detention in the Australian-run immigration detention centre on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. Behrouz Boochani’s Manus Prison narratives represent the fusion of journalism, political commentary and philosophical reflection with myth, epic, poetry and folklore. By experimenting with multiple genres he creates a new literary framework for his uncanny and penetrating reflections on exile to Manus Island and the prison experience from the standpoint of an Indigenous Kurdish writer. In addition, the narratives he constructs function as political and philosophical critique and expose the phenomenon of Manus Prison as a modern manifestation of systematic torture. Drawing on scholarship from social epistemology, this article emphasises the situated nature of Boochani’s writing and the interdependent way of knowing uniquely characteristic of his positionality. This study also demonstrates, from the perspective of the translator, the interdisciplinary nature of the translation process and indicates how a particular philosophical reading was required, particularly in order to communicate the work’s decolonial trajectory. The Manus Prison narratives depict a surreal form of horror and are best described in terms of anti-genre: the stories redefine and deconstruct categories and concepts; they resist style and tradition; and they show the limitations of established genres for articulating the physical, psychological and emotional impact of exile and indefinite detention on refugees.'  (Publication abstract)

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  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Continuum : Journal of Media and Cultural Studies Shifting The Terms of Debate : Speaking, Writing and Listening Beyond Free Speech Debates vol. 32 no. 4 2018 14342144 2018 periodical issue

    'When the alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopolous toured Australia in late 2017, he attacked familiar targets – Muslims, feminists and much of the mainstream media – as well as ridiculing Aboriginal art as ‘crap’ and ‘really shit’. Demonstrating the transnational scope and ubiquity of contemporary racisms, the UK-born, US-based and internationally-known ‘free speech’ advocate had little difficulty in identifying the key targets of vilification in Australia. This theme issue identifies the deep limitations and the violent consequences of the longstanding and constantly developing ‘free speech debates’ typical of so many contexts in the West, and explores the possibilities to combat racism when liberal values are ‘weaponized’ to target racialized communities.'  ( Tanja DreherMichael Griffiths Introduction)

    2018
    pg. 527-535
Last amended 22 Aug 2018 13:31:54
527-535 Behrouz Boochani and the Manus Prison Narratives : Merging Translation with Philosophical Readingsmall AustLit logo Continuum : Journal of Media and Cultural Studies
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