RE: Reading the Postmodern: Canadian Literature and Criticism after Modernism

Reconciling Regionalism: Spatial Epistemology, Robert Kroetsch, and the Roots of Canadian Postmodern Fiction

123 reConCiLing regionaLism: sPatiaL ePistemoLogy, robert kroetsCH, and tHe roots of Canadian Postmodern fiCtion alExandER maclEod a distinCtLy Canadian Postmodernism? Few scholars are likely to remember that it was actually a Canadian group, Le Conseil des Universitiés du Québec, that in 1979 commissioned a then not-so-well-known French intellectual named Jean-François Lyotard to write and deliver what he described as “an occasional text” or “a report on knowledge” called “Les problèmes du savoir dans les sociétés industrielles les plus développées” (xxv). Before Lyotard’s text took on its more famous title The Postmodern Condition, and before this seminal and controversial argument against the “language games” and the “progressive meta-narratives of enlightenment thought” spread through the European and Anglo-American critical communities to become one of the most influential philosophical statements of the second half of the twentieth century, Canadian scholars provided the first unlikely audience for Lyotard ’s work in this area. In his brief introduction to The Postmodern Condition—a short essay that still circulates around the alExandER maclEod 124 world in every copy of the book—Lyotard even makes a special point of thanking the president of Québec’s conseil for initially requesting the essay and “for his kindness in allowing its publication ” (xxv). One might think—given the connection that once existed between Canadian scholars and one of the major voices of international postmodernism—that the unique brand of postmodern fiction Canadian writers and critics have produced might demonstrate a similar hospitable affinity to European and Anglo -American influences, but this has not been the case.1 During the last three decades, the dominant scholarly discussions surrounding postmodern fiction and criticism in English-speaking Canada have followed a very different trajectory, and it could be argued that in their efforts to uncover, codify, and promote a “distinctly” Canadian version of postmodernism, many Canadian writers and critics have shied away from a direct engagement with the most disturbing yet still fundamental insights of postmodern discourse. Although Theo D’haen and Hans Bertens suggest in their collection Postmodern Fiction in Canada, that Canadian literature should be recognized as “postmodern par excellence,” very few critics associated with postmodernism in Canada have ever sought to establish clear connections or direct linkages between Canadian postmodernism and other international models (5). Instead, scholars have moved in the opposite direction, and in their efforts to define postmodernism “in a Canadian sense,” they have often struggled to reconcile such definitions (or even the desire for such definitions) with post1 The obvious differences in literary culture and scholarship between French-speaking and English-speaking Canada must be acknowledged on this point. Le Conseil des Universitiés du Quebec was certainly in tune with the latest developments in critical theory when it first commissioned Lyotard in 1979, and during the intervening years, it could be argued that, as a group, francophone critics have always been more receptive to European theoretical influences than their anglophone counterparts in other parts of the country. REconciling REgionaliSm 125 modernism’s most basic critique of traditional metaphysics (Besner 11).2 Rather than being a part of international postmodernism , Canadian fiction is usually studied as being apart from the broader concerns of the discourse. In The Canadian Postmodern , to choose only the most obvious example of this trend, Linda Hutcheon’s canon-establishing definitions are actually created through just such a distinctly Canadian negation of other international versions of postmodern aesthetics. Throughout her influential text, Hutcheon suggests that since Canada has always had “a greater need to sustain a distinct cultural identity than can be found in the United States—or in Britain” and because the country “has never really been in synch with the US in terms of cultural history,” it is probably “unwise” for critics to expect to find common ground in the ways that Canadian and 2 In many studies of postmodernism in Canadian fiction, scholars are often forced to serve two masters at the same time. While their theoretical arguments routinely reference, and often praise, poststructuralist notions of infinitely deferred signification, undecidability and différance, the nationalist frameworks of their projects and their quests for a distinctly Canadian postmodern immediately re-entrench exactly the kind of categorical essentialism that deconstruction rarely tolerates. For example, in Eva DariasBeautell ’s Contemporary Theories and Canadian Fiction, the split between the “Contemporary Theories” and the “Canadian Fiction” could...