SS1010: Australian People: Indigeneity & Multiculturalism: Reading with a purpose

In No Friend but the Mountains, Boochani (2018) identifies his position at the bottom of a complex power structure he calls a ‘Kyriarchal System’. What is this Kyriarchal System, and where is Australian society situated within this power structure?

Answer the question with reference to specific examples from Boochani’s account of the Kyriarchal System, but also consider what this book tells us about Australia – how Australian society influences the Kyriarchal System that Manus is part of, and/or how Australian society is influenced by that system.

Notice that the question has two important parts and you need to answer both.

Part One: What is this Kyriarchal System – here you need to define the concept and give examples of instances where Boochani felt oppressed by this system.

Part Two: Where is Australian society situated within this power structure – here you might think about what influence we all, here in Australia have on the power structure in the Manus Island Detention Centre. Or you might think about what influence Manus Island Detention Centre has on our society here.

Let’s take a moment to develop a basic understanding of Kyriarchal systems (which can be a somewhat confusing concept). Wikipedia is not a reliable academic source, so you cannot use it in your essay, however Wikipedia will often provide a simplified overview of complex topics that will help in further academic reading. Let’s see what Wikipedia has to say about Kyriarchy:

In feminist theory, kyriarchy (/ˈkaɪriɑːrki/) is a social system or set of connecting social systems built around domination, oppression, and submission. The word was coined by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza in 1992 to describe her theory of interconnected, interacting, and self-extending systems of domination and submission, in which a single individual might be oppressed in some relationships and privileged in others…

Kyriarchy encompasses sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, xenophobia, economic injustice, prison-industrial complex, colonialism, militarism, ethnocentrism, anthropocentrism, speciesism and other forms of dominating hierarchies in which the subordination of one person or group to another is internalized and institutionalized (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyriarchy).

Ok, so now let’s draw out some focus words from the essay question and our basic understanding of Kyriarchy that will guide your reading and help you discover a theme in Boochani’s Autobiography that you may want to write about.

Focus words

At this point you don’t need to have all the answers, that is why you are going to do some reading, and if we read Boochani’s autobiography with these keywords in mind you will find these themes I promise you.

Remember our teachers want us to succeed and they wrote the question to fit the book.

Here are some themes that I found in ‘No Friend but the Mountain’ that might be worth considering.

• Starvation—suffering—exile—banishment—substandard conditions—neglect—sickness—disease—unsanitary—sensory deprivation—emaciation
• Illegal immigration—refugee—victimisation—dehumanisation—persecution—innocence—inequality—powerlessness—voicelessness—submission
• Biopolitics—biopower—social psychology—manipulation—propaganda—secrecy—radicalisation—militarisation—securitisation—state of exception—regional imperialism
• Power—control—hierarchy—detention—imprisonment—surveillance—panopticon—child incarceration—privatisation of prison complex—structural violence—domination—force
• Psychological distress—humiliation—fear—disrupted identity—eroded sense of self—trauma—debasement—depression—anxiety—despondence—mental illness—sorrow—self-harm—suicide—death
• Violence—overcrowding—cultural conflict—hostility—animosity—hatred—erosion of social norms
• Symbolic/everyday resistance—rebellion—agency

Keep in mind, you are an academic reading with a purpose, so you need to devise a way of cataloguing the important passages in the book that you find. You don’t want to have to go back and read the whole thing again looking for that great example that you vaguely remembered reading.

I like to buy the book so that I can highlight passages and write my thoughts in the margins.

However there are a number of ways of doing this, what is important is that you record the sentences that matter, how they relate to your theme and what page they are on, if nothing else write down the important pages, you will thank me later.

Now it is time for you to read the book, yes, the whole book. Context is important, plus your marker has read the book and will be able to tell when you’re making stuff up.

Then it is time to select the topic that you wish to discuss in your essay.

Note: you will not have enough space to effectively write about all these themes, so it is a good idea to narrow your essay down to one or two of them and discus them in detail.

So how do you choose which one? Well a good way is to choose the topic that interests you the most.

You will have to do further research and that means more reading, and it is much easier to read about something that interests you. Also, it is worth considering the themes that caused you to feel a sense of injustice, anger, or sadness whilst reading the text. If it caused you to feel this way, then it is likely that others have felt strongly about the same issue and have written about it in journal articles.