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Narrative, Resistance and Manus Prison Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2021

Omid Tofighian  and
Behrouz Boochani
Omid Tofighian
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales/University of Sydney
Behrouz Boochani
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales/University of Canterbury
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Abstract

In early 2020 Behrouz Boochani and Omid Tofighian conducted a speaking tour of the United States, Canada, UK, and Europe (including Ireland). They presented at numerous universities, including the University of Cambridge. In their Cambridge talk they focused on the transformative potential of storytelling and the importance of creating new intellectual frameworks for resistance. Key themes and issues in their discussion included features of Manus Prison Theory, analysis of the book No Friend but the Mountains: Writing From Manus Prison, Australia's detention industry, and colonialism. The three parts of this article involve: the context to Boochani's incarceration and the creation and success of his award-winning book; a dialogue between Boochani and Tofighian; and a series of analytical remarks by Tofighian in response to audience questions.

Keywords

Behrouz BoochaniManus IslandBordersExileRefugeesLiterature of Resistance
Type
Special Focus: Pluralism in Emergenc(i)es in the Middle East and North Africa
Information
Review of Middle East Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , December 2020 , pp. 174 - 195
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Middle East Studies Association of North America, Inc.

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Footnotes

1

Section Two of this article consists of an edited dialogue between Behrouz Boochani and the author at the University of Cambridge.

References

2 Boochani, Behrouz, No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison, trans. Tofighian, Omid (Sydney: Picador, 2018), 75–76Google Scholar.

3 ABC News, “Asylum seekers arriving in Australia by Boat to be Resettled in Papua New Guinea,” 2013, July 19, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-19/manus-island-detention-centre-to-be-expanded-under-rudd27s-asy/4830778.

4 The Republic of Nauru, a former protectorate, is for women, unaccompanied minors, and families.

5 Megan K. Stack, “Behrouz Boochani Just Wants to Be Free,” The New York Times, August 4, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/magazine/behrouz-boochani-australia.html.

6 Jeff Sparrow, “A Place of Punishment: No Friend But the Mountains by Behrouz Boochani,” Sydney Review of Books, September 21, 2018, https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/review/a-place-of-punishment-no-friend-but-the-mountains-by-behrouz-boochani/; Anne McNevin, “What we owe to the refugees on Manus,” Inside Story, January 30, 2019, https://insidestory.org.au/what-we-owe-to-the-refugees-on-manus/; J.M. Coetzee, “Australia's Shame,” The New York Review of Books, October 26, 2019, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/09/26/australias-shame/.

7 The Wheeler Centre, “Behrouz Boochani Wins the 2019 Victorian Prize for Literature,” January 31, 2019, https://www.wheelercentre.com/news/behrouz-boochani-wins-the-2019-victorian-prize-for-literature; Richard Cooke, “Australia's Most Important Writer Isn't Allowed Into the Country,” The New York Times, February 9, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/08/opinion/australia-behrouz-boochani-victorian-prize.html.

8 Moones Mansoubi, “Translating Manus and Nauru: Refugee Writing,” ArtsEverywhere, July 9, 2020, https://artseverywhere.ca/2020/07/09/manus-nauru/.

9 For an account of the simultaneous writing and translating see Boochani, Behrouz and Tofighian, Omid, “The Last Days in Manus Prison,” Meanjin, 77.4 (2018): 32–45Google Scholar, https://meanjin.com.au/essays/the-last-days-in-manus-prison/.

10 Translator's note, Omid Tofighian, “Writing from Manus Prison: A Scathing Critique of Domination and Oppression,” The Guardian, 2018, July 31, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/31/writing-from-manus-prison-a-scathing-critique-of-domination-and-oppression; Omid Tofighian, “Truth to Power: My Time Translating Behrouz Boochani's Masterpiece,” The Conversation, 2018, August 15, https://theconversation.com/truth-to-power-my-time-translating-behrouz-boochanis-masterpiece-101589.

11 Boochani, Behrouz, “Film as Folklore,” trans Tofighian, Omid, Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, 18 (2019): 185–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tofighian, Omid, “Chauka Calls – A Photo Essay,” Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, 18 (2019)Google Scholar; Tofighian, Omid, “Displacement, Exile and Incarceration Commuted into Cinematic Vision,” Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, 18 (2019): 91–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Galbraith, Janet, “A Reflection on Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time,” Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, 18 (2019): 193–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sarvestani, A. Kamali, “Searching for Chauka,” trans. Tofighian, Omid, Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media 18 (2019)Google Scholar; Elphick, Jeremy, “Cinematic Poetics and Reclaiming History: Chauka, Please Tell us the Time as Legacy,” Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, 18 (2019): 199–204CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Grasso, Arianna, “Rewriting the Refugee Identity in Alter/Native Spaces: Behrouz Boochani on Twitter,” Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia 10.2 (2019): 22–35Google Scholar.

13 Boochani appeared via video link from New Zealand and me in person. The talk was titled “Manus Prison Theory: Displacement, Exile and Knowing in Indefinite Detention”; it was organized by the Risk and Renewal in the Pacific Research Network, funded by the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) – convened by Tom Powell Davies and Dylan Gaffney.

14 Behrouz Boochani and Omid Tofighian, “Manus Prison Theory: Borders, Incarceration and Collective Agency,” Griffith Review 65, ed. A. Hay (2019a); Omid Tofighian, “Introducing Manus Prison Theory: Knowing Border Violence,” Globalizations 17.7 (2020): 1138–56, https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2020.1713547. Boochani, Behrouz and Tofighian, Omid, “No Friend but the Mountains and Manus Prison Theory: In Conversation,” Borderlands 19.1 (2020): 8–26Google Scholar, doi:10.21307/borderlands-2020-002; Behrouz Boochani, “Manus Prison Theory,” trans. Omid Tofighian,” The Saturday Paper, 11–17, 2018 August, https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/opinion/topic/2018/08/11/manus-prisontheory/15339096006690.

15 Omid Tofighian, “Translator's Tale: A Window to the Mountains,” in No Friend but the Mountains, xi-xxxiv and “No Friend but the Mountains: Translator's Reflections,” in No Friend but the Mountains, 359–74.

16 I am grateful to Alexandra Hall for her transcription work and editing references and bibliography.

17 In No Friend but the Mountains all characters are given titles or epithets that represent their essential qualities and personal features. This act of naming is also a way of reclaiming identity for the imprisoned refugees who are reduced to numbers in the system; it is a way to make the people beautiful, unique and powerful.

18 Tofighian, Omid, “Behrouz Boochani and the Manus Prison Narratives: Merging Translation with Philosophical Reading,” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 32.3 (2018): 532–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

Omid Tofighian, “No Friend but the Mountains: Translator's Reflections,” in No Friend but the Mountains, 359–74.

19 Omid Tofighian, “Sanctions, Refugees and the Marginalised: Iran Uprisings are Australia's Concern Too,” ABC News, 2018, January 6, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-06/iran-uprising-australiamanusisland-political-refugees-islamic/9305756; Tofighian, Omid, “Black Bodies for Political Profit: Sudanese and Somali Standpoints on Australia's Racialized Border Regime,” Transition, 126 (2018): 5–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/transition.126.1.02; Adam, Mohamed, “Betrayal. A Prison Under Seige,” Transition, 126 (2018): 19–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/transition.126.1.03?seq=1; Hassaballa, Hass, “Time, Torture … and Tomorrow / Artist's Statement,” Transition 126 (2018): 31–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/transition.126.1.05; https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/transition.126.1.05?seq=1; Abdile, Hani, “My Mother Tongue / Untitled / Home Far From Home,” Transition, 126 (2018): 25–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/transition.126.1.04; Behrouz Boochani and Omid Tofighian, “‘A Human Being Feels They are on a Precipice’: COVID-19's Threshold Moment,” UNSW Sydney Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, June 16, 2020, https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/publication/%E2%80%98-human-being-feels-they-are-precipice%E2%80%99-covid-19%E2%80%99s-threshold-moment; Behrouz Boochani, “The Boats are Coming’ is One of the Greatest Lies Told to the Australian People,” The Guardian, July 1, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/02/the-boats-are-coming-is-one-of-the-greatest-lies-told-to-the-australian-people; Behrouz Boochani, “The Paladin Scandal is Only a Drop in the Ocean of Corruption on Manus and Nauru,” The Guardian, February 27, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/27/the-paladin-scandal-is-only-a-drop-in-the-ocean-of-corruption-on-manus-and-nauru.

20 Tazreiter, Claudia, “Suffering and its Depiction through Visual Culture: How Refugees are Turned into Enemies and Figures of Hatred – The Australian Case,” in Refugee Routes, eds. Agnew, Vanessa and Konuk, Kader (Berlin: Transcript Verlag, 2019)Google Scholar; Claudia Tazreiter, “The Emotional Confluence of Borders, Refugees and Visual Culture: The Case of Behrouz Boochani, Held in Australia's Offshore Detention Regime,” Critical Criminology (2020): 1–15; McDonald, Willa, “A Call to Action: Behrouz Boochani's Manus Island Prison Narratives,” in Still Here: Memoirs of Trauma, Illness and Loss, eds. Avieson, Bunty, Giles, Fiona, and Joseph, Sue (New York: Routledge, 2019), 238–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Whitlock, Gilian, “The Diary of a Disaster: Behrouz Boochani's ‘Asylum in Space’,” The European Journal of Life Writing, 7 (2018): 176–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brigitta Olubas, “We Forgot Our Names,” Public Books, 2019, https://www.publicbooks.org/we-forgotour-names/; Olubas, Brigitta, “‘Where We Are Is Too Hard’: Refugee Writing and the Australian Border as Literary Interface,” Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 19.2 (2019): 1–15Google Scholar, https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/index.php/JASAL/article/view/13455.

21 Claire Loughnan, “No Friend but the Mountains by Behrouz Boochani,” International State Crime Initiative, 2019, http://statecrime.org/state-crime-research/no-friend-but-the-mountains-by-behrouz-boochani/.

22 Fatima Measham was one of the judges for the Victorian Premier's Prize for Non-Fiction, and author of this article about Boochani's and my work: Fatima Measham, “Love in a Time of Apocalypse,” Meanjin, 2019, https://meanjin.com.au/essays/love-in-a-time-of-apocalypse/.

23 Omid Tofighian, “Behrouz Boochani and the Manus Prison Narratives: Merging Translation with Philosophical Reading,” 532–40; Omid Tofighian, “Translator's Tale: A Window to the Mountains, xi–xxxiv; Omid Tofighian, “No Friend but the Mountains: Translator's Reflections,” 359–74; Omid Tofighian, “Truth to Power: My Time Translating Behrouz Boochani's Masterpiece.”; Omid Tofighian, “Writing from Manus prison: a scathing critique of domination and oppression,” The Guardian, July 31, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/31/writing-from-manus-prison-a-scathing-critique-of-domination-and-oppression; Behrouz Boochani and Omid Tofighian, (2019), “No Friend but the Mountains: Translation as Literary Experimentation and Shared Philosophical Activity,” in In the Shoes of the Other: Interdisciplinary Essays in Translation Studies from Cairo, ed. Samia Mehrez (Cairo: Kotob Khan, 2019); Behrouz Boochani and Omid Tofighian, “The Last Days in Manus Prison”.

24 Omid Tofighian, “Behrouz Boochani and the Politics of Naming,” Australian Book Review, 413 (2019), https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/archive/2019/371-august-2019-no-413/5688-behrouz-boochani-and-the-politics-of-naming-by-omid-tofighian; Arash Davari, Omid Tofighian, Golnar Nikpour, and Naveed Mansoori, “Is Abolition Global? Iran, Iranians, and Prison Politics (Part 1),” Jadaliyya, September 2, 2020, https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/41658; Arash Davari, Omid Tofighian, Golnar Nikpour, and Naveed Mansoori, “Is Abolition Global? Iran, Iranians, and Prison Politics (Part 2),” Jadaliyya, September 8, 2020, https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/41668/Is-Abolition-Global-Iran,-Iranians,-and-Prison-Politics.

25 Behrouz Boochani, “The Boats are Coming”. Behrouz Boochani, “The Paladin Scandal is Only a Drop in the Ocean of Corruption on Manus and Nauru,” The Guardian, February 27, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/27/the-paladin-scandal-is-only-a-drop-in-the-ocean-of-corruption-on-manus-and-nauru.

26 Umut Ozguc, “Borders, Detention, and the Disruptive Power of the Noisy-Subject,” International Political Sociology 14.1 (2020): 77–93; Arash Davari, Omid Tofighian, Golnar Nikpour, and Naveed Mansoori, “Is Abolition Global? Iran, Iranians, and Prison Politics (Part 1 and 2); Omid Tofighian, “Behrouz Boochani and the Politics of Naming.”

27 Omid Tofighian, “No Friend but the Mountains: Translator's Reflections,” 359–74.

28 Mahnaz Alimardanian, “Ethnography of a Nightmare: Public Anthropology, Indefinite Detention and Innovative Writing,” American Ethnologist 47.1 (2020); Umut Ozguc, “Borders, Detention, and the Disruptive Power of the Noisy-Subject,” 77–93; Behrouz Boochani, “Manus Prison Poetics/Our Voice: Revisiting ‘A Letter from Manus Island,” a reply to Anne Surma, trans. Omid Tofighian, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 32.3 (2018): 527–31; Anne Surma, “In a Different Voice: ‘A Letter from Manus Island’ as Poetic Manifesto,” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 32.3 (2018): 518–26; Behrouz Boochani and Omid Tofighian, “No Friend but the Mountains: Translation as Literary Experimentation and Shared Philosophical Activity,” in In the Shoes of the Other: Interdisciplinary Essays in Translation Studies from Cairo, ed. Samia Mehrez (Cairo: Kotob Khan, 2019).

29 Fatima Measham, “Love in a Time of Apocalypse,” Meanjin, 2019, Winter, https://meanjin.com.au/essays/love-in-a-time-of-apocalypse/.

30 Chandran Kukathas, “Controlling Immigration Means Controlling Citizens,” Mercatus Center: F. A. Hayek Program, 2018, April 25, https://ppe.mercatus.org/%5Bnode%3A%5D/essays/chandran-kukathas-controlling-immigration-means-controlling-citizens; Chandran Kukathas, Immigration and Freedom (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021).