Unruly Penelopes and the Ghosts: Narratives of English Canada

FIVE: The Production of Vancouver: Termination Views in the City of Glass

F I V E The Production of Vancouver: Termination Views in the City of Glass Eva Darias-Beautell Many contemporary studies have examined from a wide spectrum of angles the ways in which texts and other artworks document and enact the socialization of a particular space (Anderson, Bhabha, Colley, Grosz, Lindner). A major dimension of that process of socialization would be the production of local subjects against, or at least in contrast with, that of national citizens (Appadurai). In the case of contemporary Canada, this process is often thought of as a refiguring of the relationship between the local and the national, and it may take a variety of forms: from the (analysis of the) production of the urban in relation to the natural, thus often reconsidering or undermining dichotomous national ideologies of the past (Cavell), to the discussion of local realities in the context of global economies, often intervening between contested spaces and bringing forth conflicting narratives of place (Derksen, “National”). Such multi-scaled vision permeates recent West Coast art and writing, and specifically, those works that engage in the performance of place as a form of intervention in the powerfully idealized official and mass-media images of the city of Vancouver (Delany, Dickinson, Shier). This essay will provide an analysis of the representation of Vancouver in a selection of contemporary texts and artworks, which I will read vis-à-vis one another with the aim of disclosing the labyrinthine structures of the 1 3 1 1 3 2 E v a D a r i a s - B e a u t e l l social construction of place. I will focus on various modes of production of locality in the manifold sense articulated by the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai as “a structure of feeling, a property of social life, and an ideology of situated community” (189), a multifarious process which proves immensely fragile and implies constant struggle. A parallel emphasis will be placed on how these works may function as “termination views,” a notion referring to Bernie Miller and Alan Tregebov’s deconstructive techniques and implying a particular work’s capacity to block or cancel a certain spatial perspective (see Eyland). Recent developments seem to suggest the idea that the growth of Vancouver as an emblematic “world city” of the Pacific Northwest has happened at the cost not only of erasing its national ties, but of losing its social cohesiveness. I intend to engage with the ideological implications of that spatiotemporal shift by looking at texts and artwork as sites for the manufacture of discordant images of the city and as effective tools to block idealized views of Vancouver. My selection of works aspires to be as representative as possible of the wide and rich spectrum available and includes: Jin-me Yoon’s Group of Sixty-Seven (1996), Douglas Coupland’s photographic book City of Glass (2000), Madeleine Thien’s novella “A Map of the City” (2001), George Bowering’s story “Standing on Richards” (2004), Rebecca Belmore’s performance piece “Vigil” (2002), Lee Maracle’s story “Goodbye, Snauq” (2004), and Bernie Miller and Alan Tregebov’s public sculpture Street Light (1996). The Group of Sixty-Seven A decisive factor in the ongoing dismantling of the idea of the nation has been (and still is) the powerful globalization trends, which have swayed not only the economy and the political functioning of Western nationstates , but also their so-called national cultures (Delany, Introduction 8). The cities have had a major role in this process, since the globalization (and now antiglobalization) movements can be defined as mostly urban phenomena and, as Paul Delany argues, “the global marketplace is presented as an urban rather than a national system” (“Hardly the Center” 188).1 It has also been in the urban arena where the postmodern privileging of the spatial dimension of knowledge has thrived, opening up infinite possibilities of juxtapositions, simultaneity, and rhizomatic models of experience. In contrast with the unattainable nature of a rather abstract nation-state, cities occupy and represent a space that is concrete, livable, lovable, participative , and increasingly interactive. They are the spaces that produce and are produced by technology, by constantly new forms of communication and relationships, since as Delany continues, “connections jump over Th e P r o d u c t i o n o f V a n c o u v e r 1 3 3 the hinterlands and pass along a network...