Beyond the Edge of the Century: The Postcolonial Imagination in the “New” Fictions of the Canadas
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.20089720Keywords:
Postcolonial, Canada, Canadian fiction, Nation, Nation buildingAbstract
Whereas the 1990s witnessed the establishment of the basic parameters within which Canada could be considered a postcolonial enclave, the new millennium, shortly after its opening, has seen the reworking of the Canadian postcolonial. The contemporary rethinking of the postcolonial condition of Canada has given place to new theoretical moves, partly uncovered when looking at the long-standing mutual nurture between theoretical and imaginative writing. This paper centres on this contemporary theoretical revision to eventually propose that this revisionary invigoration has mainly been launched from fictions by authors indirectly affected by the multicultural agenda of the 1980s and 1990s. As a corollary of the reconfiguration of the Canadian postcolonial, and its views on nation, culture and identity in the negative, the fictions published in the late 1990s and the early years of the new millennium show a penchant for writing the nation in multifarious forms that gradate the (post)colonial, while bringing to the fore regional and communal histories silenced for the welfare of the national/state mirage.
Downloads
References
ANGUS, Ian. 1997. A Border Within: National Identity, Cultural Plurality and Wilderness. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s U.P.
ATWOOD, Margaret. (1991) 1998. “Wilderness Tips”. Wilderness Tips. London: Virago: 197-221.
BALL, John Clement. 2005. “Canadian Crusoes from Sea to Sea: The Oceanic Communities of
Douglas Glover’s Elle and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi”. In Kanaganayakam, Chelva. (ed.). The Shifting Spaces of Canadian Literature. Toronto: TSAR: 85-104.
BANNERJI, Himani. 2004. “Geography Lessons: On Being an Insider/Outsider to the Canadian Nation”. In Sugars, Cynthia. (ed). Unhomely States: Theorizing English Canadian Postcolonialism. Toronto: Broadview Press: 289-300.
BENNET, Donna. 1993-1994. “English Canada’s Postcolonial Complexities”. Essays on Canadian Writing, 51-52: 164-210.
BERGER, Carl. 1966. “The True North Strong and Free”. In Russell, Peter. (ed.). Nationalism in Canada. Toronto: McGraw-Hill: 3-26.
BHABHA, Homi K. 1990. “DissemiNation: Time, Narrative and the Margins of the Modern Nation”. In Bhabha, Homi K. (ed.). Nation and Narration. London: Routledge: 291-322.
—. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.
BÖLLING, Gordon. 2004. “‘You’re Not the Indian I Had in Mind’: Hollywood’s Appropriation of the Native Other in Guy Vanderhaege’s The Englishman’s Boy and Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water”. Unpublished paper presented at the conference Mediating American and Canadian Literature and Culture across a Latitudinal Line: An Exploration of Transnational Crosscurrents. Centre for Canadian Studies, University of Saarlandes (Germany). 28-30 October.
BRYDON, Diana. 1995. “Introduction: Reading Postcoloniality, Reading Canada”. Essays on Canadian Writing, 56: 1-19.
CHOWDHURY, Kanishka. 2006. “Interrogating ‘Newness’: Globalisation and Postcolonial Theory in the Age of Endless War”. Cultural Critique, 62 (Winter 2006): 126-161.
CORSE, Sarah M. 1997. Nationalism and Literature: The Politics of Culture in Canada and the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P.
DAVEY, Frank. 1997. Postnational Arguments: The Politics of the Anglophone-Canadian Novel. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
DICKINSON, Peter. 1999. Here Is Queer: Nationalism, Sexualities and the Literatures of Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
FRYE, Northrop. 1971. The Bush Garden. Toronto: Anansi.
GARRAND, Greg. 2004. Ecocriticism. London: Routledge.
GLOVER, Douglas. 2003. Elle: A Novel. Fredericton (NB): Goose Lane Editions.
GOLDIE, Terry. 2003. Pink Snow: Homotextual Possibilities in Canadian Fiction. Toronto: Broadview Press.
GUNNARS, Kristjiana. 1992. The Substance of Forgetting. Red Deer (Al): Red Deer College Press.
HEBBLE, Ajay, Donna Palmateer Pennee and Jim Struthers. (eds.). 1997. New Contexts of Canadian Criticism. Toronto: Broadview Press.
HOWELLS, Coral Ann. 2003. Contemporary Canadian Women’s Fiction: Refiguring Identities. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.
HUTCHEON, Linda. 1988. The Canadian Postmodern: A Study of English-Canadian Fiction. Toronto: Oxford U.P.
—. 1991. “Circling the Downspout of Empire”. In Adams, Ian. (ed.). Past the Last Post: Theorising Postmodernism and Postcolonialism. New York: Harvester-Wheatsheaf: 167-189.
JOHNSTON, Wayne. (1998) 2000. The Colony of Unrequited Dreams. Toronto: M & S.
KEOHANE, Kieran. 1997. Symptoms of Identity: An Essay on the Canadian Identity. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
KERTZER, Jonathan. 1998. Worrying the Nation: Imagining a National Literature in English Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
KUESTER, Martin. 2000. “A Mythic Act of Possession: Constructing the North American Frontier in Guy Vanderhaege’s The Englishman’s Boy”. In Kuester, Martin, Gabrielle Christ, and Rudolf Beck. (eds.). New Worlds: Discovering and Constructing the Unknown in Anglophone Literature. München: Vögel: 277-292.
MACDONALD, Ann-Marie. (2003) 2004. The Way the Crow Flies. London: Harper-Perennial.
MACKEY, Eva. 1999. The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada. London: Routledge.
MARTIN, Paul. 2006. “Editorial: Canada and the ImagiNation”. The Compass, 29 (July): www.nwpassages.com
MAUFORT, Marc. 2002. “Introduction: Postcolonial Variations on a Canadian Theme”. In Maufort, Marc and Franca Bellarsi. (eds.). Reconfigurations: Canadian Literatures and Postcolonial Identities. Brussels: P.I.E.-Peter Lang: 11-13.
MAUFORT, Marc and Franca BELLARSI. (eds.). 2002. Reconfigurations: Canadian Literatures and Postcolonial Identities. Brussels: P.I.E.-Peter Lang.
MOSS, Laura. 2003. (ed.). Is Canada Postcolonial? Unsettling Canadian Literature. Waterloo (Ont.): Wilfried Laurier Press.
PADOLSKY, Enoch. 2004. “Olga in Wonderland: Canadian Ethnic Minority Writing and Postcolonial Theory”. In Sugars, Cynthia. (ed.). Unhomely States: Theorizing English Canadian Postcolonialism. Toronto: Broadview Press: 238-245.
REDEKOP, Magdalene. 2004. “Canadian Literary Criticism and the Idea of a National Literature”. In Kröller, Eva-Marie. (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P.: 263-275.
ROBINSON, Eden. (2000) 2001. Monkey Beach. London: Abacus.
RUKSZTO, Katarzyna. 2000. “Out of Bounds: Perverse Longings, Transgressive Desire and the Limits of Multiculturalism: A Reading of Fall on Your Knees”. International Journal of Canadian Studies, 21 (Spring): 17-33.
SAKAMOTO, Kerry. 2003. One Hundred Million Hearts. Florida: Harcourt.
SLEMON, Stephen. 2003. “Afterword”. In Moss, Laura. (ed.). Is Canada Postcolonial? Unsettling Canadian Literature. Waterloo (Ont.): Wilfried Laurier Press: 318-324.
SUGARS, Cynthia. (ed.). 2004. Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism. Peterborough (On.): Broadview Press.
TURNER, Margaret E. 1995. Imagining Culture: New World Narrative and the Writings of Canada. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s U.P.
URQUHART, Jane. 2005. A Map of Glass. Toronto: M & S.
VANDERHAEGE, Guy. (2002) 2003. The Last Crossing. Toronto: M & S.
VERDUYN, Christl. (ed.). 1998. Literary Pluralities. Toronto: Broadview Press.
WYILE, Herb. 2002. Speculative Fictions: Contemporary Canadian Novelists and the Writing of History. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s U.P.
—. 2003. “Lost in Transit: A Rev. of Douglas Glover’s Elle”. Canadian Literature, 182: http://www.canlit.ca/reviews/unassigned/6270_Wyile.html
WYILE, Herb, Jennifer Andrews and Robert Viau. 2002. “Introduction: Past Matters/ Choses du passé”. Studies in Canadian Literature, 27 (1): http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/SCL/vol27_1/introduction.htm
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
