Response to Ann Lucas’ Review¹ of Yasmin Jiwani’s “Discourses of Denial:
Mediations of Race, Gender, and Violence

Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press, 2006

In her review of my book, Discourses of Denial, Ann M. Lucas raises some relevant issues that require some comment on my part as author of the text.  While attending to the strengths of the analysis offered, she identifies what she regards as critical shortcomings.  I am grateful for this opportunity to respond to the ‘flaws’ she considers problematic.

Lucas argues that while the book is an effort to map the Canadian public imagination insofar as it is textured by racism and sexism, the data to support such a contention are regional and limited to two locales.  The main point of departure of Discourses of Denial is that Canada is a white settler society premised on a history of gendered and racial subordination, internal colonialism and the genocide of native people. Thus, relations with Others are rooted in such a colonial history and deeply influence contemporary representations of racialized Others.  Second, there are numerous other Canadian studies, and historical sources cited to support the main argument of the book.  Additionally, I include an analysis of national Canadian media to demonstrate mediations of race and discuss the magnitude of media concentration in the country.  The implications of the latter cannot be underestimated in terms of the formation of a national imagined community.

Lucas maintains that I use findings from studies conducted in other countries without specifying the differential laws, media organizations and ‘norms of citizenship’ that are extant in those particular sites.  This is a spurious argument for it fails to examine the ways in which I, or others, use existing studies. The works I cite in Discourses of Denial are used to illuminate particular nexuses of power relations in order to augment an understanding of how these play out in terms of race and gender. Lucas seems to overlook the reality that globalization and migration have created transnational communities that share commonalities not simply based on history and culture but also on experiences of racial exclusion, a topic that is central to my work.  As a postcolonial theorist, I am more interested in what Frantz Fanon might have to say about the interiorization of racism and how it applies to alienated and excluded people of colour than to suggest that because he wrote about Algerian or French society, his analytical insights are therefore limited, or confined to a geographic space and time.  

Contending that I blur the boundaries between judicial discourse and media discourse, Lucas argues that these settings require different modes of discourse analysis.  While there is some merit in the argument, it falls short on three accounts in this context:  First, I emphasize at the outset my standpoint as a woman of colour in a minority position, and underscore my activist involvement in the court trial I examine and in other cases that I discuss.  Thus, my point of departure is explicit.  In analyzing the discourse of the courtroom or media, I begin from this standpoint.  Second, judicial and media discourses are not mutually exclusive. The media draw upon judicial discourse and reproduce it; similarly, judicial discourse draws on mediated discourses. Third, in the chapter where I offer an analysis of a court case, I make a distinction between the media’s analysis of the court proceedings and my own observations as a participant-observer in the courtroom.

Lucas charges that my intention to emphasize intersectionality is ‘often lost’ and that I pay ‘insufficient attention to the interplay of racism and sexism.’ In the introduction and first chapter, I not only outline intersectionality but also explicitly argue for an equal emphasis on interlocking power relations.  Simply focusing on intersectionality misses the overarching structural ways in which power asserts itself and racialized hierarchies are reproduced.  Along with other chapters, my analysis of the murder of Reena Virk illustrates this interplay of what Himani Bannerji terms racist sexism.

Finally, Lucas argues that I do not focus on differences within groups. Interestingly, these are some of the same issues I raise in discussing differential degrees of vulnerability to violence in the chapter dealing with the health care system.  However, my intent in this work is to draw out the structural and overarching factors that determine and sometimes overdetermine exclusion on the basis of gendered racism.  Within this context, I rely on strategic essentialism (Spivak) to make a case for how racism and racist sexism influence the lives and realites of people of colour in Canada.

¹ Ann Lucas’ Review of Yasmin Jiwani’s Discourses of Denial: Mediations of Race, Gender, and Violence