Document Type
Review
Abstract
[First paragraph]
Joya Uraizee’s new book, In the Jaws of the Leviathan subverts many official, state-sanctioned discourses about genocide and mass murder which can often legitimate violence, represent survivors as merely victims and westerners as unambiguously altruistic. Because such narratives of genocide “silence the variety of voices within each culture” in a way that is “misleading, counter-productive, and false,” Uraizee analyzes novels and films from Pakistan/India, Nigeria, Chile, and Rwanda to argue that the techniques these texts use of “interactive gazes, direct metaphors and multi-vocal narrative structures” in fact “do create a sense of shared understanding or solidarity” (65). Of course the novels and films are not equally effective in counteracting more stereotypical representations of genocide and Uraizee’s compelling examination of eight different texts meticulously relates not only a strong theoretical framework and a clear history of each incident of mass violence but also important information about the production of each text such as whether it was commercial or consumer-driven or not. Thus, Uraizee concludes that in more commercial novels and films violence is depicted “generally and indirectly, even when the representation is quite graphic” causing “discomfort” in the viewer or reader (2). However, in the experimental novels and films especially those made or written by women, violence “is represented directly” and is “individualized or humanized” in a way that keeps us from becoming voyeurs and helps us interact “with the survivor in a dynamic way” (3).
Repository Citation
Rahman, Shazia. "Review of In the Jaws of the Leviathan: Genocide Fiction and Film, by Joya Uraizee." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 11, no. 4, 2011, pp. 1–4. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol11/iss4/20