Selves and Subjectivities Reflections on Canadian Arts and Culture

Long a topic of intricate political and social debate, Canadian identity has come to be understood as fragmented, amorphous, and unstable, a multifaceted and contested space only tenuously linked to traditional concepts of the nation. As Canadians, we are endlessly defining ourselves, seeking to locate our sense of self in relation to some Other. By examining how writers and performers have conceptualized and negotiated issues of personal identity in their work, the essays collected in Selves and Subjectivities investigate emerging representations of self and other in contemporary Canadian arts and culture. Included are essays on iconic poet and musician Leonard Cohen, Governor General award–winning playwright Colleen Wagner, feminist poet and novelist Daphne Marlatt, film director David Cronenberg, poet and writer 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.” Drawing together themes of gender and sexuality, trauma and displacement, performati­vity, and linguistic diversity, Selves and Subjectivities offers an exciting new contribution to the multivocal dialogue surrounding the Canadian sense of identity.

About the Editors

Manijeh Mannani is professor of English and comparative literature at Athabasca University and adjunct professor of comparative literature at the University of Alberta. Veronica Thompson is dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Athabasca University.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction / Manijeh Mannani and Veronica Thompson
2. A Semiotic Reading of Hédi Bouraoui’s The Woman Between the Lines / Elizabeth Dahab
3. Mourning Lost “Others” in Ronnie Burkett’s Happy / Janne Cleveland
4. Putting an End to Recycled Violence in Colleen Wagner’s The Monument / Gilbert McInnis
5. Representations of the Self and the Other in Canadian Intercultural Theatre / Anne Nothof
6. Pulling Her Self Together: Daphne Marlatt’s Ana Historic / Veronica Thompson
7. “New, Angular Possibilities”: Redefining Ethnicity Through Transcultural Exchanges in Marusya Bociurkiw’s The Children of Mary / Dana Patrascu-Kingsley
8. The Elegiac Loss of the English-Canadian Self and the End of the Romantic Identification with the Aboriginal Other in Leonard Cohen’s Beautiful Losers / Jesse Rae Archibald-Barber
9. Playing the Role of the Tribe: The Aesthetics of Appropriation in Canadian Aboriginal Hip Hop / Thor Polukoshko
10. Toward a Theory of the Dubject: Doubling and Spacing the Self in Canadian Media Culture / Mark A. McCutcheon
11. List of Contributors

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CA). It may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that the original author is credited.