Selves and Subjectivities
276 pages, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2
Paperback
Release Date:15 Nov 2012
ISBN:9781926836492
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Selves and Subjectivities

Reflections on Canadian Arts and Culture

Athabasca University Press

Long a topic of intricate political and social debate, Canadianidentity has come to be understood as fragmented, amorphous, andunstable, a multifaceted and contested space only tenuously linked totraditional concepts of the nation. As Canadians, we are endlesslydefining ourselves, seeking to locate our sense of self in relation tosome Other. By examining how writers and performers have conceptualizedand negotiated issues of personal identity in their work, the essayscollected in Selves and Subjectivities investigate emergingrepresentations of self and other in contemporary Canadian arts andculture. Included are essays on iconic poet and musician Leonard Cohen,Governor General award-winning playwright Colleen Wagner, feminist poetand novelist Daphne Marlatt, film director David Cronenberg, poet andwriter Hédi Bouraoui, author and media scholar Marusya Bociurkiw,puppeteer Ronnie Burkett, and the Aboriginal rap group War Party.

As critic Diana Brydon has argued, contemporary Canadian writers are"not transcending nation but resituating it." Drawingtogether themes of gender and sexuality, trauma and displacement,performativity, and linguistic diversity, Selves andSubjectivities offers an exciting new contribution to themultivocal dialogue surrounding the Canadian sense of identity.

Manijeh Mannani is associate professor of English andcomparative literature in the Centre for Humanities at AthabascaUniversity and adjunct professor in the Comparative Literature Programat the University of Alberta. Veronica Thompson isdean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at AthabascaUniversity.

Introduction 1  / Manijeh Mannani and VeronicaThompson

A Semiotic Reading of Hédi Bouraoui’s The Woman Betweenthe Lines 13 / Elizabeth Dahab

Mourning Lost “Others” in Ronnie Burkett’sHappy 39 / Janne Cleveland

Putting an End to Recycled Violence in Colleen Wagner’sThe Monument 69 / Gilbert McInnis

Representations of the Self and the Other in Canadian InterculturalTheatre 95 / Anne Nothof

Pulling Her Self Together: Daphne Marlatt’s AnaHistoric 115 / Veronica Thompson

“New, Angular Possibilities”: Redefining EthnicityThrough Transcultural Exchanges in Marusya Bociurkiw’s TheChildren of Mary 151 / Dana Patrascu-Kingsley

The Elegiac Loss of the English- Canadian Self and the End of theRomantic Identification with the Aboriginal Other in LeonardCohen’s Beautiful Losers 175 / Jesse RaeArchibald-Barber

Playing the Role of the Tribe: The Aesthetics of Appropriation inCanadian Aboriginal Hip Hop 207 / Thor Polukoshko

Toward a Theory of the Dubject: Doubling and Spacing the Self inCanadian Media Culture 235 / Mark A. McCutcheon

List of Contributors 265

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