Canadian Cultural Poesis: Essays on Canadian Culture

Introduction: A Poetics of Canadian Culture

x List of Illustrations chapter 16 — Maîtres Chez Nous | Annie Gérin Fig. 1 Pierryves Anger, Le malheureux magnifique with graffiti, 1980s / 324 Fig. 2 Gilbert Boyer, Comme un poisson dans la ville, 1988 / 334 Lori Blondeau, Belle Sauvage, 2005 / 342 chapter 21 — Through a Canadian Lens | Carol Payne Fig. 1 Sir John A. Macdonald, c1867–1891 / 422 Fig. 2 Royal Corps of Engineers, Untitled, 1873 / 428 Fig. 3 Charles Marius Barbeau, Old Menesk, 1927 / 431 Fig. 4 National Film Board of Canada, “For an Exclusive Clientele: Charles Camsell Indian Hospital,” 1958 / 435 The origin of this book springs largely from the recognition that until now there has been no textbook by Canadians, for Canadians, on Canadian culture. When the call for essays on Canadian culture went out, there were no rigidly preconceived ideas about what kind of thing we were looking for. The essays gathered here contain something of a surprise because they reveal a startling amount of concern for the issue of Canadian national identity, albeit with a far more positive view regarding its absence than one might expect. The very idea of producing a book on Canadian culture at a time when most Canadians still discuss the impossibility of even finding a national identity presents quite a paradox and a challenge to anyone writing an introduction to the subject. This paradoxical fascination with an indeterminate Canadian identity raises another point that concerns the formation of cultural studies as a new discipline. Cultural studies already vigorously debates the extent to which it fuels the fires both of “identity politics” (in which a social movement advances the interests of a particular social group as opposed to the society as a whole), and of what some have called “culture wars” (ideological struggles over cultural issues like abortion, gun control, and homosexuality ). But, as different societies take on the rhetoric of multiculturalism—a term invented in Canada—such conflictual political language seems inevitable. If, as Northrop Frye suggests, “a nation’s identity is (not in) its culture,”1 it is hardly possible to permanently separate identity politics from culture in Canada. The point of Canadian Cultural Poesis then seems less to find Canadian identity than to try to understand the open-ended, negotiated nature of the process of identification. Many of the essays found in this collection negotiate between different cultures in a Canadian context and appear to keep the question of nationalism suspended between its opposing tendencies toward unity and plurality. For instance, there are not only writers who question the policy of multiculturalism but also francophone writers who address Quebec nationalism, and writers who address the First Nations’ struggle for autonomy. Although directed primarily at English-speaking Canadians, the text leaves an open space for cultural plurality and provides an occasion for its writers and its readers to “translate” themselves by crossing linguistic, political, and cultural boundaries. In the interest of maintaining the interdisciplinary nature of the subject of culture, the editors have divided the material into the areas of media, xi Preface Garry Sherbert identity, language, and dissidence. These areas are focused enough to gather the essays according to their content, but sufficiently generalized to avoid locating them according to specific academic disciplines. The book strives not for the unity of some idea of culture but for union wherein the idea of culture is not made whole, but the idea of the whole is made possible . Cultural studies does not swallow the other disciplines, but respects their specific differences while providing a space for the disciplines to communicate with each other in a sustained and productive way. One way Canadian Cultural Poesis exemplifies this respect for disciplinary differences while promoting their interaction is by means of the “public art” or the visual artwork that introduces the subsections in the text. The artwork also emphasizes the organizing theme of the book, which is that cultural poesis is the simultaneous experience of making and being made by culture. Through the essays and the artworks, the text participates in the “making of culture,” making and being made. The book is designed to provoke students into doing their own version of a poetics of culture whereby they experience making and being made through a critical or creative act. The text’s value is that it exemplifies, for students, the many ways that the discovery of cultural studies can be made personally relevant...