What is an “identity”? Culture as managed diversity (Wallace) People who have the same culture...
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Transcript of What is an “identity”? Culture as managed diversity (Wallace) People who have the same culture...
What is an “identity”?
• Culture as managed diversity (Wallace)
• People who have the same culture can predict each other
• Identity may be practiced through shared images and discourses
Statist Identities
• “nation state”
• the Other is other countries
Culture is managed diversity (Wallace)
• Identity needs an Other
• We watch ourselves from the position of the Other
• Different Canadians have different Others
Statist identity and ethnic identities in Canada
• The Other of prototypical Anglo-Canadian: the American, the French Quebecker, the ethnic, the rest of the world
• prototypical Canadian identity is primarily statist
• The (main) Other of the “ethnics”: the prototypical North American
• Ethnic identity in Canada is diasporic
French Identity in Quebec
• The Other is English North America
• Modern Franco-Quebec identity is statist (localized in a territory)
Shared images
• the flag
• nature
• mounties
• Sioux Indians
Shared discourses
• How Canadians are Different
• Hockey
• Weather
• Canada the Civilized Country
Weather in Canada
• “something we love to hate, and nevertheless must hate to lose” (208)
• cannot appreciate cold in a “colonized public domain” (210) that valorizes business and pleasure
Weather as a Discourse Topic
• Weather = nature vs. culture
• Romantic weather
• Weather as a threat
• Weather disasters
• Weather as we don’t talk about it
How can
• the indomitable, unpredictable, and anti-disciplinary excesses of winter precipitation
• be admitted into a public discourse that is so much ordered and enabled (as satellite views remind us daily) by the frame of technological mastery
• without appearing to be caught in a pre-modern, pre-adult condition of perverse glee? (210)
It is
• almost impossible to survive a winter free from ritual performances of betrayal.
• Can we detect a symptomology of sublimated guilt? (211)
• - Guilt about being more consumerist than patriotic
Intermeteorological Colonization
Europeans colonize CanadaAmericans colonize Canada
[How about non-European Canadians?]
Multicultural policy
• characterizes the “ethnic” as “a people whose static cultural practices are located both in a past and elsewhere” (30)
“Multicultural”
• 1. Consisting of more than one culture
• 2. Tolerant of all cultures
• 3. Poor and/or not white; esp. originating in the developing world
– esp. in discussing education and immigration
Canadian Discourses about the Developing World
• Canada - the civilized country
• Third World - in need of help
• poor
• undemocratic
• cruel
• “U.S. dominates, Canada helps”
• peace-keeping
Multiculturalism and the Developing World
• Discourse extended to immigrants and their children
• Immigrants and their children “view” themselves from the “Canadian” position
• They may buy into the discourse
• This strengthens statist identity in Canada
– it is the patriotic thing to do
“Ethnic” counter-discourses
• b) extoll home country vs. Canada
• c) develop a counter-identity
– e.g. diasporic, “nomadic” identity
Black Identity and the State
• statist (nation-state) identity makes demands on Black identity
• diaspora identity makes other demands
“Blackening”
• Somalis
• from outside
• from inside
Nomadicism
• diasporic cultures
• Jews
• Afro-diaspora
• a challenge to statist identities
Who Owns Canadian Weather?