Apresentação
I. Talk by Guest Lecturers
Behrouz Boochani (UNSW) and Omid Tofighian (UNSW) |Creative Resistance against the Border-Industrial Complex: Representing and Translating the Manus/Nauru Prison Narratives
This talk offers critical insights into the incarceration and systematic torture of people seeking asylum in Australia by boat, with focus on offshore indefinite detention (Manus Island/Port Moresby and Nauru). We also examine the use of creativity, heritage and new media by refugees in their struggles against Australian border violence. We show how writers and creatives (and also translators) have been drawing on histories of resistance and creative/intellectual traditions in order to resist against the brutal border-industrial complex. With reference to our collaborative work, we first critically analyse the manipulation of time and identity as a method of torture in immigration detention. We then explain how writing and art have been employed by refugees as forms of creative and anti-colonial resistance.
II. Dialogue with CES researchers
Silvia Maeso (CES) | Revolt 4 freedom in the prisons and the streets
Silvia Maeso will address rebellions and mass insurrections against colonial racial violence and incarceration regimes in European and Latin American cities.
Júlia Garraio (CES) | Titillating commodities? Rape stories in mainstream media
Júlia Garraio will discuss the challenges of making conflict-related sexual violence visible by examining how rape stories are often co-opted for agendas that promote securitization and policies of exclusion of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers.
III. Debate with Workshop participants
Biographic notes
Behrouz Boochani is a Kurdish-Iranian writer, journalist, scholar, cultural advocate and filmmaker. He is an Associate Professor in Social Sciences at UNSW; non-resident Visiting Scholar at the Sydney Asia Pacific Migration Centre (SAPMiC), University of Sydney; Honorary Member of PEN International; and winner of an Amnesty International Australia 2017 Media Award, the Diaspora Symposium Social Justice Award, the Liberty Victoria 2018 Empty Chair Award, and the Anna Politkovskaya award for journalism. He was a writer for the Kurdish language magazine Werya; he holds a Masters degree in political science, political geography and geopolitics and graduated from Tarbiat Moallem University and Tarbiat Modares University, in Tehran. Behrouz was a political prisoner incarcerated by the Australian government in Papua New Guinea for almost seven years. In November 2019 Behrouz escaped to New Zealand. He now resides in Wellington, New Zealand.
Omid Tofighian is an award-winning lecturer, researcher and community advocate, combining philosophy with interests in citizen media, popular culture, displacement and discrimination. He is adjunct lecturer at the School of the Arts and Media, University of New South Wales; honorary research fellow at Birkbeck Law, University of London; faculty at Iran Academia; and campaign manager for Why Is My Curriculum White? – Australasia. He contributes to community arts and cultural projects and collaborates with refugees, migrants and youth. His publications include Myth and Philosophy in Platonic Dialogues (Palgrave 2016); translation of Behrouz Boochani's multi-award-winning autobiographical novel No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison (Picador 2018); co-editor of special issues for journals Literature and Aesthetics (2011), Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media (2019) and Southerly (2021); and co-translator and co-editor of Freedom, Only Freedom: The Prison Writings of Behrouz Boochani (Bloomsbury 2022).
Silvia Maeso (CES) is Principal Researcher of the Centre for Social Studies and coordinator of the research project POLITICS - The Politics of Anti-Racism in Europe and Latin America (funded by the ERC). Her research and teaching activities focus on critical race studies, institutional racism, police violence, anti-discrimination legislation, antiblack racism and antigypsyism.
Júlia Garraio (CES) is a researcher at the Center for Social Studies. She is co-coordinator of the Observatory masculinidades.pt and the working groups Policredos (Religions and Society) and GPS-CES (Research Group on Sexualities). She is Co-PI of the project UnCoveR - Sexual Violence in Portuguese Mediascape. She participated in the projects (De)Othering - Deconstructing Risk and Otherness: hegemonic scripts and counter-narratives on migrants/refugees and 'internal others' in Portuguese and European mediascapes and DeCodeM - (De)Coding Masculinities: Towards an enhanced understanding of media's role in shaping perceptions of masculinities in Portugal (funded by FCT).
