Book Review: The Politics of Storytelling: Violence, Transgression, and Intersubjectivity by Michael Jackson

Abstract

Michael Jackson has produced a valuable study of stories and storytelling as these enter into the lives of many different sorts of people-veterans of foreign wars, refugees from wars and genocide, Aboriginal children of the stolen generation in Australia, Kuranko villagers in the north of Sierra Leone, and the general public of his native New Zealand, among others. The subject matter of stories told by this array of humanity varies widely, as would be expected, but there is an underlying theme running throughout this sample, having to do with the appropriation of storytelling as a means of coping with the often disorienting and sometimes numbing character of human experience. At the source of all these stories is a core of raw violence, experienced directly or vicariously, but Jackson presents an ultimately optimistic portrait of storytelling as a path towards redemption.