Page - 167 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/01

Reading The Book of Joseph | 167www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/1, 145–171 The real author of The Book of Joseph is an anonymous and (as of yet) un- known writer, employed by Ubisoft to write the book as part of the promotional material included in the Mondo edition of the game. Here, the text-immanent author is clearly distinguishable (unlike in the cases of the game and the trail- er). Even though Joseph is nowhere in the text identified explicitly as the author of the text, we have an abundancy of rhetorical clues to argue in favour of this reading option, among which the strongest is the appearance of the name of Joseph below a picture of himself (p. 3) and beneath the prologue (p. 5). Interestingly enough, Joseph also appears, besides many others, such as Jacob, John, and Faith, as a character in the text of the book itself. The text-im- manent author writes about himself as a character in his own story in three different grammatical and communicative forms. In the majority of these cas- es, Joseph writes about himself in the first-person singular: for example: “I am the messenger” (p. 5), “I wouldn’t give up” (p. 85), and “I tell them what The Voice told me, again and again” (p. 115). However, in some other cases, although not very often, Joseph appears as part of a collective “we” (first-person plural). To give some examples: when Joseph describes how the Seed family survived under the rule of their abusive, alcoholic father – “We lived off a patchwork of welfare, food stamps, charity, and soup kitchens” (p. 24); or when Joseph has finally found his brother John and they become – quite literally – a collective again – “When we were reunit- ed, John even hated himself” (p. 77). In one instance, in the first chapter (and only there), the text-immanent au- thor writes about himself in the third-person singular. The second section of the chapter tells about “a child of about ten” (p. 9), delaying the explicit iden- tification of the text-immanent author with the character of the same name somewhat more. Only in the third section is this tension lifted: “The father thrashed his arms furiously while the boy, young Joseph Seed, stood with his head bowed, contrite and seemingly fixated on the floorboards” (p. 9). This movement from a third-person representation to a first-person rep- resentation results in the merging/coinciding of the text-immanent author’s and character’s positions. Owing to this movement, the position of Joseph Seed is strengthened. Joseph Seed occupies all possible positions, removing the difference between the positions of author and character. He becomes the centre of the textual world as he is the centre of the sect. A similar thing happens with the text-immanent reader, who is addressed by the text-immanent author in two grammatical and communicative man- ners, which are more or less equal in number: a second-person singular/plural