Synopses & Reviews
Discourses of Denial uncovers how racism, sexism, and violence interweave deep within the foundations of our society. Using examples from the lives of immigrant girls and women of colour, Yasmin Jiwani considers the way accepted definitions of race and gender shape and influence public consciousness. With a perspective both academic and activist, she exposes how media representations of violence serve the status quo and fail to tell the whole story about racialized and gendered inequalities.
Synopsis
Issues of race, gender, and violence have long been prominent in the public imagination. Discourses of Denial broadens our understanding of violence and explodes common mythologies and definitions. Yasmin Jiwani argues that the symbolic and discursive violence that occurs in the realm of the media and in the daily encounters of racialized girls and young women is intimately linked with violence enacted on institutional levels. Focusing on the dominant media's framing of violent events while including the voices of those who are marginalized, Jiwani exposes how particular definitions of violence advanced by the media serve the status quo and in the process, re-entrench and reproduce racialized and gendered inequalities. More importantly, she reveals how preferred interpretations of an event or an issue privilege one form of violence, such as sexism, thereby diminishing consideration of racism as violence and hindering analysis of their complex convergence.
In linking race, gender, and violence, Discourses of Denial makes an important contribution to our understanding of the complex and interconnected influences that shape the violence of contemporary social reality and that contour the lives of racialized women. This book is of particular relevance to readers interested in the intersection of race, gender, and violence in our increasingly mediated society.