Explorations in Difference: Law, Culture, and Politics ed. by Jonathan Hart and Richard W. Bauman (review)

LETTERS IN CANADA and Politics. Foreword There is a bistro i.rj;l;entll1e novels and in Outremont. Universil:v of Toronto Press and Centre for Constitutional """"",.HlVCJ, of Alberta. xiv, paper What can academics tell us about the pOStIlnO(lern n:anstc.rrrlatlLOn and cultural and polltl,cal modernism in which we are elUlue::;IU::::U, whichreinscribes the as~mInpt10n in the HUMANITIES 137 heterodoxy which assumes difference politics must necessarily reject the ideal of impartiality. Each ofthese ideological essays offers brief illustrations to illuminate its particular thesis, but the volume moves next to four 'Instances' where postmodern theory receives more extended application. Sheila Noonan reopens the abortion debate by demonstrating how totalizing liberal feminism discounted the differing experiences of non-white, non-middleclass , non-heterosexual women. Richard F. Devlin's account of the Irish hunger strike distinguishes between the scepticism ofpostmodempolitical philosophy and deconstruction as a potentially effective tool for political empowerment. Claude Denis presents a Canadian case turning on cultural identity issues: a court awarded anAboriginal plaintiff damages for assault, battery, and false imprisonment because he had not consented to be initiated in a tribal ceremony prescribed for him by the elders of his community, with Denis offering multiple frames through which to view facts and law. And Pamela McCallum reads Alejo Carpentier's novel El siglo de las luces as exemplurn of the double character of the modernist Enlightenmentshowinghow its simultaneouslyemancipatory and limiting effects were enhanced when its values were inscribed upon a colonial society with a racial hierarchy profoundly different from the hierarchies of the European society which gave rise to it. Appropriately, the meanings of this collection emerge out of the diversity ofits subject matter and itsviewpoints. Contributors are variously drawn from the academic disciplines of law, literature, sociology, political science, and philosophy; Bawnan and Hartoffer only signposts and fruitful juxtapositions. For example, Nedelsky's unresolved problem about how to provide equal choice for entering into and withdrawing from relationships is in part resolved by Norris's assessment of power which follows; similarly , Nedelsky's optimism about the potential of law to determine which differences ought to matter might be illustrated by the strategies recommended in the pieces by Devlin and Denis. But no conclusions are forced upon us. It is a reliefto the reader and a credit to Bauman and Hart that this collection subversively resists coalescence into any meta-narrative or truth claim valorizing difference as the new hegemony of unitary Significance. (ELLEN ANDERSON) Ian Lancashire in collaboration with John Bradley, Willard McCarty, Michael Stairs and T.R. Wooldridge. Using TACT with Electronic Texts: A Guide to Text Analysis Computing Tools New York: Modern Language Association of America 1995. 361, xiii, with accompanying CD-ROM. us $50.00 The first electronic text project, Father Busa's concordance to the works of 5tThomas Aquinas and related authors, began almost fifty years ago. Since ...