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.