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humanities 553 resonant, to my mind, with other recent theorizations of ethnicity such as Pamela Banting's work on the poetics of Fred Wah. Similarly lucid is the analysis of Joy Kogawa's Obasan, which examines `how the female body functions as a site where the constructions of race, gender, sexuality, and nationalism are implicated in each other' in the representation of a diasporic subjectivity which is simultaneously `a product and a reflection of historical events, but also ... a site of resistance.' The `resistance' embodied in the `hysterical script' which is Naomi's response to racialization and sexual abuse is shown to pivot, paradoxically, on the recuperative power of silence as an ironic form of `talking cure.' Taking her cue from theorists such as Shoshana Felman, Kamboureli proceeds with a canny reading of the novel's treatment of pedagogy as illustrating `a double lesson on the way knowledge and ignorance constantly displace each other.' The implications of this chapter's concerns with pedagogy and learning will be especially suggestive for any one who teaches Kogawa's novel. Less successful is the ambitious chapter which sets out to examine the idea of multiculturalism from the tripartite perspectives of law, philosophy, and media discourses. Based on an extremely selective set of sources drawn from each category (Charles Taylor is the representative philosopher, and a `selective review' from the Globe and Mail is the media example), this discussion strikes me as long on its critique of positivist approaches to ethnic difference, and short on concrete solutions for attaining the `mastery of discomfort' it calls for in the end. I'm not convinced that we ultimately get much further here than the general observation that perspectives of ethnic diversity routinely reflect a deep ambivalence, a tendency to both legitimize and also disavow ethnicity as`a cultural synonym ... of Otherness and incommensurability.' Postmodernism is an easy target these days, and I also confess to a little weariness with Kamboureli's predictable political critique of `postmodern multiculturalism' B almost exclusively as it is embodied in the target example of Linda Hutcheon's work. Otherwise, this chapter offers quite an original examination of the history of ethnic anthologies as `cultural archives' bound up with the commodification and management of ethnicity as a `designated margin.' Somewhat uneven in the achievements of its individual chapters and loose in its overall structure, Scandalous Bodies is also an often remarkably incisive and rewarding study, a serious and challenging contribution to the study of ethnic literature and cultural politics in English Canada. (CHRISTINE WIESENTHAL) Sheila Rabillard, editor. Essays on Caryl Churchill: Contemporary Representations Blizzard. 224. $24.95 554 letters in canada 1999 Caryl Churchill’s plays are provocative and challenging. From the genderbending Cloud Nine to the language play of The Skriker, Churchill confronts her audiences with powerful theatrical and social statements. This collection of essays affords new perspectives on Churchill’s œuvre, rising to the level of engagement of her plays while offering various avenues of interpretation for her work and for the study of modern drama. As Sheila Rabillard suggests in her introduction, there are several ways to engage with the dialogue of these essays. Some essays offer new overviews of Churchill’s œuvre (such as Anthony Jenkins's analysis of social relations); others give anecdotal accounts of personal experiences of a play’s performance history (such as Susan Bennett’s discussion of her encounters with Cloud Nine). The book begins with these two essays, and their juxtaposition is a good guide to what the book has to offer: both the panoramic view and the close-up. The collection of essays shifts between these two perspectives, so that we are given grand overviews, portraits of plays in context, and deeply theoretical close-ups of the plays’ inner workings. Some essays address Churchill’s earlier work, revisiting its politics and context. For example, Meenakshi Ponnuswami offers a new approach to Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, suggesting ways in which this play is`more deeply and intricately historicized’ than later plays. Harry Lane situates Top Girls within the context of the secrecy of the Thatcher years. These essays reflect on history: both on its making and on its reshaping. On the other hand...

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