The citation of injury: regarding the exceptional body

Abstract

Australia's instrumentalisation of non-citizen bodies via the practice of extrajudicial immigration detention produces a context for abjection in the form of hunger strikes and self-mutilation. This article examines the representation of these self-injuries in the poems 'Asylum' by Mehmet al Assad (2002) and 'Make a whistle from my throat' by an anonymous Baxter detainee (2005); Shahin Shafaei's solo play Refugitive (2002-04); solidarity fasts by Australian activists (2002-04); and Mike Parr's performance installation Close the Concentration Camps (2002). While presenting Australian audiences with the possibility for imaginative encounter with injured bodies that seem immutably 'other', these works also offer something more troubling, but potentially transforming: a context for recognition of proximity (both ethical and political) to the sovereign-produced position of exception. Show more