CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

The NFB’s mandate is “[t]o make and distribute films designed to help in all parts of to understand the ways of living and the problems of Canadians in other parts.”

NFB Founding Commissioner John Grierson

(Film Act of 1939, cited in Evans, 1991, p. 17)

“It’s only by our lack of ghosts we’re haunted.”

Earle Birney (1964, p. 37)

In 2004, Canadians made their nominations for the “Greatest Canadian,” as a prelude to a licensed television mini-series making its way around the globe after being shown first in Great Britain and then in France and the U.S. At a time when the nation state is being significantly weakened by the growing influence of multinational corporations, international trade agreements, and military preemption, nations seem to have a tremendous desire to identify their “greatest” citizens. “The Greatest Canadian” program is a boon for educators hoping to link the media with this form of national awareness. Canadians nominated candidates, and the CBC tallied the votes and announced the top 10: – 1. – 2. – 3. – 4. Sir – 5. – 6. Lester Bowles Pearson – 7. – 8. Sir John A. Macdonald – 9. – 10. (CBC, 2005) Clearly, the above are all great Canadians, but something immediately troubles the list: are no female Canadians worthy of inclusion in the top 10? In the context of this list, women are other, and their otherness is peculiar, for many Canadian women could have been included. For example, Nellie McClung, Margaret Atwood, Julie Payette seem to haunt the list and be made present through their

1 CHAPTER 1 absence. They are neither present nor absent, yet also both. The series facilitates the making of a useful connection between education and media, for although hauntings trouble the series, it has curricular value. Identifying the list’s omissions opens toward meeting those not included in it. Here, I refer to “Otherness” as a category rather than to specific other people or other groups. The present book develops an approach to perform similar operations on other, arguably richer, Canadian media: classic National Film Board of Canada documentaries, which can serve the curriculum and open toward the Other when the proposed framework informs their use. This book argues that Haunting Inquiry can inform the productive curricular use of these classic NFB documentaries in K- 12, postsecondary, adult, and community and public contexts. The book’s chapters present readings of the films to illustrate some of the topics Haunting Inquiry can address. This book reintroduces important, if forgotten, National Film Board of Canada documentaries into contemporary curriculum conversation. I use an inflection of Derridean deconstruction to mobilize historical, political, and intellectual problematics as elliptical, curricular opportunities. These opportunities lurk as structuring, semantic potentialities in the texts. My research explores these hauntings in and around the films to open toward Others neither fully present nor absent within the Canadian imagination. The Others remain illicit, as is the character of haunting. In today’s world, curriculum thinkers and practitioners face the benefits and challenges of national, historical, political, cultural, and intellectual traditions. How have these traditions contributed to the contemporary learning landscape? How can they help us reimagine possible future paths? Haunting Inquiry is a conceptual framework inspired by my reading of Jacques Derrida’s projection of hauntology. Haunting Inquiry employs the language of spectrality to explore what curriculum attempts or functions to bury over, conceal, but which nonetheless returns, often uncannily, to whisper in the ear of the present and beckon, if one can hear, toward hopeful futures. In recent years, educators have increasingly fielded calls to expand received notions of literacy and to incorporate media into the curricular vocabulary. Curiously, these calls have rarely addressed the invaluable tradition of classic National Film Board of Canada documentaries. These films are internationally recognized, if, ironically, forgotten media resources. They have won countless awards, influenced generations of filmmakers, and helped build a Canadian reputation for artistic innovation, intellectual daring, and public purpose. However, concerns emerge over these classic films, especially when viewed by contemporary eyes. Troubling assertions, implications, and assumptions concerning war and conflict, poverty and inequality, social diversity, memory, and other problems haunt the films. Haunting Inquiry provides a framework for curricular understanding to use these troubling features as curricular opportunities. How can curriculum thinkers and practitioners employ the rich tradition of classic NFB documentaries in contemporary contexts where the films seem increasingly out of place; where the films’ notions of culture, nation, and

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