Discourses of Denial

Mediations of Race, Gender, and Violence

Yasmin Jiwani

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• Published: 2006
• Subject Listing: Women's Studies, Sociology
• Bibliographic information: 288 pp., 6 x 9 in.
• Territorial rights: U.S. rights only
• Distributed for: UBC Press
• Contents

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.

Yasmin Jiwani is a professor of communication studies at Concordia University.

"This book speaks to me on several levels. It is part of a growing body of scholarship that seriously challenges the popular notions of Canada as 'a kinder, gentler nation' or as a 'peaceable kingdom.' Discourses of Denial compels Canadian social scientists to move beyond simply viewing the United States as the 'root of all evil' and to examine more carefully the sexist, racist, and classist nature of their own society."
- Walter DeKeseredy, co-author of Under Siege: Poverty and Crime in a Public Housing Community

Preface

Part 1: Laying the Terrain
1) Reframing Violence
2) Mapping Race in the Media

Part 2: Sensationalized Cases
3) Erasing Race: The Story of Reena Virk
4) Culturalizing Violence and the Vernon "Massacre"

Part 3 : Everyday Lives
5) Voicing the Violence: Racialized Girls and Everyday Negotiations
6) Voicing the Violence: Gendered Racism, Sexist Violence, and the Health Care System

Part 4: Gendering Terror
7) Gendering Terror

Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index