Manus Island is the soul of the system – In conversation with Omid Tofighian (S1 E7)

In 2017, the Iranian-Kurdish writer, Behrouz Boochani, published an extraordinary book, “No Friend But the Mountains” which documented his life imprisoned in the Australian-run immigration detention centre on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. Combining political theory, myth, poetry, memoir, the book rises to the challenge of resisting oppression by creating a new literary form of knowledge. Written using phone text messaging, the text was also a work of interdisciplinary translation, collaboration, and imagination. In this episode Lyndsey Stonebridge talks with the political philosopher, Omid Tofighian, Boochani’s translator and collaborator. They examine how contemporary migration regimes can be described as an interlocking ‘Kyriarchal’ systems of domination and explore how creative writing can lead to new understandings of injustice and human rights. This is the reference to Itamar’s letter about Boochani mentioned in the video.