Writing in and Out of Exile: A Foucauldean Reading of No Friend but the Mountains by Behrouz Boochani

Abstract

“Refugee” is a historically constructed term that privileged concerns that are substantially ideological and political rather than economic and ecological. But one cannot neglect the fact that environmental and economic concerns cannot be set apart from the political and hence rises the necessity to create a new inclusive category of “ essential needs” to consider their intrinsic interconnectivity as its one of the apriorism. Refugee literature essentially addresses not only the displacement but the gaps that are found in the sociological approach to “statelessness” and migration. On the other hand, literature stands for individual expressions and experience. Literature in the context of statelessness not only signifies the notion of being a “refugee” but being an “ asylum, seeker” as well. No Friend but the Mountains by Behrouz Boochani is such an autobigraphcial novel written in the backdrop of his experience as an asylum seeker and consequent incarceration in the Australian detention regime. The Australian detention centre is built and worked in such a way that it satisfies the idea of the panopticon. The Kyriarchal system works in the prison even in a way that affects the psyche of the imprisoned individuals and thus these stateless asylum seekers undergo extreme existential dilemmas and commit severe crimes, turning against one another and sometimes even suicides. On the basis of the experiences of Boochani, the carceral system of Australian detention centre is expounded here through a Foucaludean idea of punishment, Bentham’s notion of the panopticon as well Fiorenza’s idea of kyriarchy where all of them are essentially different shades and shapes of exerting power.