What might humanity mean in Australia today?: Listening with a hermeneutic of hope to voices from the edge
This article's central figure is Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish Iranian asylum seeker. Having almost drowned on his first attempt to reach Australia by sea, he was rescued from the waves by a warship after the second people-smuggler boat on which he had been travelling from Indonesia also broke do...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Informit
2024
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| In: |
The Australasian Catholic record
Year: 2024, Volume: 101, Issue: 1, Pages: 24-44 |
| Further subjects: | B
Humanities; Societies
B Refugees; Social life and customs B etc B Humanities; Societies, etc B Human beings; Social aspects B Life; Religious aspects; Christianity B Australia |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article's central figure is Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish Iranian asylum seeker. Having almost drowned on his first attempt to reach Australia by sea, he was rescued from the waves by a warship after the second people-smuggler boat on which he had been travelling from Indonesia also broke down. He describes being left, feeling 'a deep sense of hopelessness'. Shortly after he arrived at Christmas Island in July 2013, Boochani was, together with at least a thousand other men, placed on Manus Island and imprisoned by the Australian government for more than six years. Under dreadful conditions, he drew on his capacity as a journalist and a poet, which gave him an invaluable focus; and the innumerable texts he composed in Farsi he 'thumbed', often precariously, through text messages and WhatsApp, to his translators and sympathetic newspaper correspondents in Australia. These materials, documenting his experience in what he calls 'Manus Prison', form the basis of his two published books, No Friend But the Mountains (2019), which in 2019 won the Victorian Prize for Literature and the Victorian Premier's Prize for Nonfiction, and Freedom, Only Freedom (2023), a selection of his newspaper articles, beginning in 2016, together with a range of commissioned social science articles from a wide range of discipline specialities, including applied anthropology; criminology; comparative literature; literary, linguistic and comparative studies; ethnic and migration studies; politics and journalism. In this article we aim not so much to talk about Boochani and asylum seekers as to engage in a multilayered conversation with them and their friends, especially those in the academy. As one of these academics writes, 'we should refrain from talking about or for refugees, and instead speak with them and find creative and practical ways to support them'. |
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| ISSN: | 0727-3215 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The Australasian Catholic record
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.3316/informit.T2024040300006801425301793 |