Cultural Locations, Cultural Locutions

Journal of Canadian Studies • Revue d'etudes canadiennes Introduction Cultural Locations, Cultural Locutions Christi Verduyn I n the autumn of 1998, the foumal ofCanadian Studies launched its millennium project. It planned a four-issue volume of studies that would evaluate the accomplishments of the Canadian Studies enterprise and consider its future possibilities and practices in a number of areas at the outset of the twenty-first century.1 This is the third issue in fCS's millennial volume. Its subject is Canadian culture and cultural policy. Designed to explore the complexities of culture in Canada, this issue aims to represent a wide variety of perspectives and practices and to identify emerging directions in areas ranging from the literary and visual arts, to film, theatre and other performing arts such as music, radio and television. It is intended to explore the impact of globalization, technology and multiculturalism on the Canadian cultural scene, and to review the ways in which Canadian cultures can be analyzed and explored in an increasingly international world. Anyone working within a sector of the cultural domain will recognize that these are ambitious goals for a single issue of a journal. But the hope ofJCS's millennial issues has been to sketch out the possibilities for future research. It is in such a spirit that this issue on Canadian culture and cultural policy is presented. The brief introduction that follows outlines the results and achievements of the third issue in the millennial volume. The essays assembled here address many of the challenges posed in the first issue of the series, "Canadian Studies at t~e Millennium: The Journey Continues" (35.1 Spring 2000). In his introductory essay, Robert M. Campbell drew four conclusions or themes from the articles in that issue. First, he reported that contributors had assessed that globalization was a two-edged sword for Canada, offering both opportunities and constraints for analysis and action. With respect to the Canadian Studies project, assessments of globalization projected a real need for Canadian Studies to take a comparative focus. Second, there were mixed evaluations of the accomplishments of Canadian Studies as an interdisciplinary experiment . Campbell concluded that interdisciplinarity had to speak more firmly in a nationalist discourse and to the Canadian Studies agenda. These two points suggested a need to embrace analyses that avoided both universal abstractions and parochial particularities. Third, Campbell took guidance from the contributors' insistence that Canadian Studies had to return to its activist roots. Finally, he Volume 35 • No. 3 • (Automne 2000 Fall) 5 6 Introduction • Christi Verduyn noted the widespread view that Canadian Studies had to confront, assess, challenge and possibly jettison received wisdom and traditional approaches if the Canadian Studies project is to survive.2 In varying degrees, the essays produced in this issue fall within the framework established by the first issue of the millennium series. An essay by Jan Angus provides a strategic and challenging point de depart. Angus offers a new perspective from which to think about culture in general and its study in Canada in particular . Investigating contemporary understanding and experiences ofplace and space, location and nation, Angus invites us to think in the "locative case." Locative thinking is "the thinking of the particular as it leads outwards to other particulars," Angus explains. It confronts the abstract and the universal, not to condemn these but to work with them in co-operative and "connective" ways. For Angus, locative thinking seeks and provides connection, both within and beyond Canadian contexts. Locative thinking "thinks through Canadian problems as a practice that forges non-administrative relations to other places," Angus states. 11 These relations define our location in a larger world." Among the opportunities that locative thinking offers to a reflection on culture in Canada at this time is some sort of passage beyond the dangers of indifference or fundamentalism in the face of (post)modern plurality of differences. These dangers arise when, as Angus illustrates, uthis place becomes simply any place, and the here is just another there," or when "this difference" is held to be "fundamental , the measure of all others." Angus's case for the locative offers enormous potential for cultural thinking that is threatened presently by the fatigue...