Laughing at Leviathan : sovereignty and audience in West Papua
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Laughing at Leviathan : sovereignty and audience in West Papua
（Chicago studies in practices of meaning）
University of Chicago Press, 2012
- : paper
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [249]-281) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
For West Papua and its people, the promise of sovereignty has never been realized, despite a long and fraught struggle for independence from Indonesia. In "Laughing at Leviathan", Danilyn Rutherford examines this struggle through a series of interlocking essays that drive at the core meaning of sovereignty itself - how it is fueled, formed, and even thwarted by pivotal but often overlooked players: those that make up an audience. Whether these players are citizens, missionaries, competing governmental powers, nongovernmental organizations, or the international community at large, Rutherford shows how a complex interplay of various observers is key to the establishment and understanding of the sovereign nation-state. Drawing on a wide array of sources, from YouTube videos to Dutch propaganda to her own fieldwork observations, Rutherford draws the history of Indonesia, empire, and postcolonial nation-building into a powerful examination of performance and power. Ultimately she revises Thomas Hobbes, painting a picture of the Leviathan not as a coherent body but a fragmented one distributed across a wide range of both real and imagined spectators.
In doing so, she offers an important new approach to the understanding of political struggle.
by "Nielsen BookData"
