Comment: Discourse or Discovery?

Comment: Discourse orDiscovery? Douglas West's article describes two rather different research projects. I have a decided preference foroneoverthe otherthat I shall seek to support in these briefremarks. But, personal preference aside, West's attempt to pursuebothofthem at oncecauses problems of consistency and coherence. I shall treat them in tum. The first project is to demonstrate how the geographical north in Canada has become comprehensively "nordicized" - that is to say quite literally re-presented in a northern discourse. The model here, as West acknowledges , is Edward Said's immensely influential account of"orientalism" which is, in its tum, a development of some of Foucault's early work on discursive formations. Here West has done a thoroughly convincingjobof linking "nordicism" to what Foucault, with consciousambiguity, calls"thedisciplines," civil engineering, medicine, social work, linguistics, etc., discourses and activities that have become so important in the Canadian North. In re-presenting the northern resident in the ways that West describes so well as being in need of protection from physical, culturaland linguistic deprivation, northern discourse has created fertile ground for the activities ofwhat Auberon Waugh once referred to as"thenosy professions," together with their academic camp followers. Here, I think, the synchronicdescription ofthediscursive formation - what Foucault calls archaeology - could usefully besupplemented with whathe latercalledgenealogical inquiry, or "writing the history of the present ." It is striking, for example, that a somewhat earlier representation of "nordicity ," one which comes out in many of West's own comments, re-presented the northerner as sturdily independent in the face of a harsh and unforgiving land, hardly promising material for therapy. An account of how the transformation into patients and clients came about and how the disciplines have absorbed and neutralized the earlier images without destroying them would be well worthwhile. Oneclue here, which is briefly referred to 120 by West, is the role ofthe northas the"exotic" foil to the south. West develops this in an interesting way in terms of"commodification" - the museum displays, "colourful native ceremonies," guided tours, etc., through which the exotic is tamed and exploited. But the relationship nonetheless remains a binary one. In this kind ofclassification the 'south' needs the 'north' in order to be, and although the pressure to conform to the stereotype, especially in commodified form, may exact its toll, the southerner is also dependent on nordicity in all sorts of unacknowledged ways. As West makes clear, it is national identity that is at stake here: residents of Vancouver have much more in common with the inhabitants ofSeattle than they do with those ofYellowknife, but nordicity serves to mark a political-cultural distinction. Calibrating thechanging nature ofthe north-south oppositionand its consequences for the identity it sustains would be a significant enterprise. Whatblunts the force ofthis novel andimportant inquiry is the emergenceofa second project, one thatowes much less to Foucault and more to Said, orperhaps I should say less to Nietzscheand more to Marx. This second project is announced by the curious idea of "measuring the truth ofthe north" that crops up from time to time, and is implicit in the passage by Ernie Lyall that West has (misguidedly in my view) chosen to preface his work. Here, then, "nordicism"is not theconstruction of the north in discourse, but the coveringoverofa deeperexperiential reality that it is ourjob to uncover, to re-search in West's words: "At this level, the level of imageor illusion, we can see that the definition ofwhat it means to bea northern people has taken a variety of forms. These forms have created a surface appearance of the North. What lies beneath these forms, at the level of knowledge, reveals another story." Here are a whole set of new metaphors, surface and depth, appearance and reality, knowledge and illusion, which are totally at odds with Foucault's idea of a discursive formation. And the essential tension between the idea ofa world created in discourse and a world covered over by discourse is underlined by references to the northern "exRevue detudes canadiennes perience"and to phenomenological ideas like the "life world." The tension between these two very different conceptual frameworks is clearest in the otherwise interesting device ofthe diary. As a literarydevice, the diary has often been...