Kyriarchy, Nomopoly, and Patriarchal White Sovereignty

Abstract

Behrouz Boochani’s political prison writings authored from Manus Prison from 2013 to 2019, especially his notion of kyriarchal power, strike at the heart of colonial Australia and its ongoing imperial ordering. The vast body of intellectual work Boochani produced during his imprisonment makes a powerful and embodied contribution to an already established and influential body of work produced in the last two decades that has articulated the patriarchal and imperializing function of Australian sovereignty, while drawing crucial links between Indigenous dispossession and refugee imprisonment. Australia’s history as a colonial state is indissociably bound to incarceration as a practice that is critical to the exercising of illegitimate and colonial sovereignty. This violence is traceable to the foundational and ongoing function of the colonial nomopoly.