DOCSLIB.ORG

Poetry and the Canadian Public Sphere: the Public

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Poetry and the Canadian Public Sphere: the Public POETRY AND THE CANADIAN PUBLIC SPHERE: THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL ENGAGEMENT OF PAULINE JOHNSON, DOROTHY LIVESAY, AND DIONNE BRAND SHAUNA LANCIT A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ENGLISH YORK UNIVERSITY, TORONTO, ONTARIO MARCH 2017 ©Shauna Lancit, 2017 ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the roles of Pauline Johnson, Dorothy Livesay, and Dionne Brand in the evolution of the public sphere in Canada, arguing that each of these writers has functioned as what we now call a “public intellectual.” Taking their careers as exemplary, I show that the Canadian context has been particularly conducive to the ability of women poets to fulfill this social function. In attending closely to the role of the public sphere in their poetry I offer a new lens through which to understand some of their significant poems. In situating these poets in their material and historical contexts I also offer an explanation of why Canadian women writers, and poets in particular, have been unexpectedly well situated to appear as public intellectuals. Beginning with a genealogy of the public intellectual, I show the significance of this figure in the Canadian context. I demonstrate that institutional responses to Canada’s unique challenges in establishing and sustaining a public sphere have had wide-ranging effects on opportunities for artists and intellectuals to shape that sphere. These include the amplification of the voices of women poets relative to a purely market-based public sphere. I situate Johnson, Livesay, and Brand in their material and discursive contexts in order to make sense of the ways in which they figure the public sphere in their poetry, and the ways in which they use both their poetry and other forms of cultural production to encourage political and cultural change. Using an Arendtian view of the public, I argue that poetry has been an ideal site for building and maintaining a Canadian public sphere. ii Acknowledgements I wish to acknowledge: My supervisor, Len Early, a patient and rigorous guide who took on a work-in-progress and helped me mold it into its best form. My readers Terry Goldie and Art Redding, whose generous, careful, and engaged readings strengthened this project beyond measure. Barbara Godard, who was my interlocutor as these ideas were first taking shape, my imagined audience as I wrote, and whose intellectual legacy enlivens and marks this project in its entirety. Candida Rifkind, for answering questions about her research on Dorothy Livesay. Carole Gerson and Erin Wunker for sharing their articles with me. Trish Salah and k.g. Guttman, for their companionship, intellectual and otherwise. Heather White, for her eagle eye. My parents Irwin and Sheila Lancit, for the love and support that made it possible to both imagine and complete this project. Dana Baitz for her constant support as a partner, a co-parent, a colleague, and a friend, and for agreeing that creating is more important than cleaning. Asher Baitz for doing some of his growing up alongside this project, for accepting that I am sometimes lost in thought, and for sharing my love of poetry. Part of the argument in Chapter 2 appeared in Regenerations: Canadian Women’s Writing, Marie Carriére and Patricia Demers, eds., Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2014, pp. 269-82 as an article entitled “This is What a Public Intellectual Looks Like: Dorothy Livesay’s Housewife Years and the Public Sphere.” I wish to thank the University of Alberta Press for allowing me to retain copyright of this material and to expand it, now incorporated in Chapter 2 as pages 132-153. iii Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Table of Contents iv Introduction: Canadian Women Poets as Public Intellectuals 1 The Origins and Current Use of the Term “Public Intellectual” 2 Current Canadian Scholarship 6 Legislating Nothing 8 Prehistory of the Public Intellectual: Two Trajectories of Thinking About the Relationship Between the Intellectual and the Public 11 Poetry and the Canadian Public Sphere 23 Gender and the Canadian Public Intellectual 27 Structure of the Dissertation 30 Chapter 1. Pauline Johnson 37 Introduction 38 Outside the Mermaid Inn: Johnson’s Cultural Field 42 “People of Dramatic Intelligences”: Johnson’s Racial Melodrama 50 A Natural Poet: Johnson’s Semiotic field 57 “They Never Think How They Would Feel”: “A Cry from an Indian Wife” 63 “What a Public You Have” 75 iv Johnson the Dreyfusard: “‘Give Us Barabbas’” 78 Conclusion 88 Chapter 2. Dorothy Livesay 90 Introduction 90 The Public, Modernism, and the Massey Commission 94 Radio Broadcasting, the CBC and Other Publics of Modernist Canada 98 Livesay’s Publics 102 Livesay as Imagist 103 Livesay as Marxist and the Invention of the Documentary Poem 111 1. Livesay as Marxist 111 2. Livesay as Documentarian 120 The CBC Talks: Livesay as a Thinking Housewife 133 “She Cannot Think Alone”: The Limits of the Thinking Housewife 146 Counterpublics of the Housewife 151 Chapter 3. Dionne Brand 155 Introduction 155 No Language is Neutral: Coming Out as Inventory 162 “No Basis for Consensus”: Brand and the Politics of the Canadian Public Sphere 180 An Inventory of These Small Years 190 The Privation of the Literary Prize 191 v An Inventory of Despair: Mourning the Loss of a Public 198 Conclusion 209 Afterword 211 Works Cited 218 vi Introduction: Canadian Women Poets as Public Intellectuals How, and in what contexts, do poets function as public intellectuals? Are there institutions in Canada that have allowed poets to serve this function? Have women been particularly well placed to take advantage of the potential of poetry to speak to, to create, public life in Canada? These are some of the key questions of this dissertation. I ask them in a scholarly moment when they feel highly relevant. I finish this dissertation in the midst of rich conversations about an issue that was less prominent in Canadian critical discourse when I began. Throughout academia, and in public life, the idea of the public intellectual is gaining momentum as an area of inquiry. Although the rise of any theory is always multiply determined, my sense is that the question of the public intellectual has gained urgency because of the many crises that academics find themselves facing. As universities realign their purposes amidst great economic and political change, individual intellectuals are called upon to examine their political function, both within and outside the academy. Tenured academics with a commitment to some version of the university as a force for enabling and preserving intellectual engagement as a public good are explicitly making the case for the intellectual as a public figure. In Canada, funding bodies such as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council have begun to describe their relevance in terms such as “community engagement,” and “outcomes and impacts” (“Home Page”). In a Canadian context, this change has likely had an influence on the number of projects that are concerned with the engagement and public impact of the intellectual. As well, those scholars who find 1 themselves without access to funding or secure employment in the academy can look to the model of the public intellectual as an alternative source of identity (and perhaps even income). This project emerges from a historical moment in which the question of the public intellectual in Canada, as internationally, could hardly feel more pressing. The Origins and Current Use of the Term “Public Intellectual” The term “public intellectual” was brought into widespread circulation by Russell Jacoby’s The Last Intellectuals (1987), in which he acknowledges the origin of the term in the work of C. Wright Mills (117). Jacoby argues that the twin forces of gentrification and the absorption of New Left intellectuals into the academy had effectively eliminated the cultural role of the public intellectual, which he sees as having originated in the French intellectual response to the Dreyfus affair (107). Somewhat ironically, Jacoby’s argument, which I discuss at length later in this introduction, inspired a slew of responses that sought to affirm and analyze a number of figures as public intellectuals, and a number of sites as conducive to public intellectual work. The figure of the public intellectual has become highly compelling, both in academia and the popular press. The term has come to be used by journalists to establish the relevance of contemporary figures, and is sometimes inflected with the discourse of celebrity. For example, in 2008 Foreign Policy magazine published a list of what it considered to be the top 100 public intellectuals, then subjected the list to an online competition to further rank the competitors (“Top 100”). 2 Within academic contexts the term has had a parallel appeal. The Modern Language Association’s International Bibliography shows it surging in popularity between the late 1990s and the present moment. Interest in public intellectuals spans the social sciences and humanities; much new scholarship on the topic continues in Jacoby’s tradition of imagining a masculine writer of clear, accessible, discursive prose. Recent publications such as Public Intellectuals and International Affairs: Essays on Public Thinkers and Political Projects (Navari 2013), and The Public Intellectual in Canada (Wiseman 2013) either represent women’s voices as an extreme minority, or exclude them entirely. While editors note and theorize reasons for this exclusion, they fail to mention what is to my mind the most significant factor: that Jacoby’s definition of the public intellectual and conceptions of the figure that follow in his footsteps begin from terms that are already highly gendered. For the purposes of this dissertation, one of the most significant of these terms is genre. In keeping my focus on poetry, I mobilize the question of the public intellectual in a way that contests this dominant understanding of the term.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Open Wide a Wilderness Canadian Nature Poems
    Open Wide a Wilderness Canadian Nature Poems Edited by NANCY HOLMES Introduction by DON MCKAY Wilfrid Laurier University Press IfwuTH Contents xv PREFACE xvii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I INTRODUCTION: "GREAT FLINT SINGING" BY DON MCKAY THE POEMS 35 Thomas Cary from Abram's Plain 38 Adam Allan A Description of the Great Falls, of the River Saint lohn, in the Province of New Brunswick 40 Ann Cuthbert Knight from A Year in Canada 41 Adam Hood Burwell from Talbot Road 44 Standish O'Grady from The Emigrant 46 Adam Kidd from The Huron Chief 48 William Kirby from The U.E., "Niagara" 50 Alexander McLachlan The Hall of Shadows 53 Charles Sangster from The St. Lawrence and theSaguenay 55 George Martin The lewelled Trees 57 Charles Mair The Last Bison 63. Isabella V.Crawford The Lily Bed 65 Isabella V. Crawford from Malcolm's Katie 67 Ethelwyn Wetherald Unheard Niagaras 68 Ethelwyn Wetherald The Horned Larks in Winter 69 Susan Frances Harrison Rhapsodie (II) [Seranus] 70 Susan Frances Harrison A Canadian Anthology [Seranus] 73 Wilfred Campbell Indian Summer 74 Wilfred Campbell How One Winter Came in the Lake Region 75 Charles G. D. Roberts The Clearing 76 Charles G. D. Roberts from'Ave!" 80 Charles G. D. Roberts The Skater 81 Bliss Carman A Vagabond Song 82 Bliss Carman Vestigia 83 Pauline Johnson The Flight of the Crows (Tekahionwake) 85 Pauline Johnson The Camper (Tekahionwake) 86 Archibald Lampman Freedom 88 Archibald Lampman In November 90 Archibald Lampman To the Ottawa River 91 Archibald Lampman On the Companionship with Nature 92 Frederick G.
    [Show full text]
  • TREVOR CAROLAN / Dorothy Livesay in North Vancouver
    TREVOR CAROLAN / Dorothy Livesay in North Vancouver Ten years ago, as a District of North Vancouver Councillor, I proposed to my colleagues in the nearby City of North Vancouver the idea of creating a memorial plaque in honour of Dorothy Livesay. An important twentieth century Canadian poet and social activist, Livesay lived in the city on and off for more than twenty years with her husband, fellow socialist Duncan McNair. They lived in several homes within view of the inner harbour: at Cumberland Crescent, then at 848-6th Street about a block from Sutherland High School, and later on toney Grand Boulevard. Livesay wrote some of her best work here­ making it an appropriate place to commemorate not only a fine poet, but also a champion of women's rights and family planning before either became fashionable. The idea of a memorial marker-stone failed to gain traction with the politicians of the day; it's an idea that's still out there for commissioning. In her memoir Journ ey with My Selves, Livesay says that she originally arrived in BC wanting to find her way to the San Francisco literary scene. In fact, she came to Vancouver to work as an editor for a communist labour journal. From Vancouver she hoped to travel further south to join the Depression-era's well-established leftist arts community concentrated in the San Francisco Bay Area. This was IWW territory and numerous publications there served the One Big Union labour ideal, which appealed to her political interests. The city also enjoyed a long liberal tradition in its journalism and politics.
    [Show full text]
  • Dionne Brand's Global Intimacies: Practising Affective Citizenship
    Dionne Brand’s Global Intimacies: Practising Affective Citizenship Diana Brydon “I say this big world is the story, I don’t have any other” (Inventory 84) Rosi Braidotti suggests that “The human has been subsumed in global relations of intimacy, complicity and proximity with forces of the inhuman and post-human kind: scientific, industrial and military complexes, global communication networks, processes of commodification and exchange on a global scale” (264). She argues further that it is the task of critical theory to track the “fluctuations“ of this new disorder (264). In this paper I ask what tracking these fluctuations involves, for the poet Dionne Brand who sets herself this task in her long poem, Inventory, and for the critic who reads her work fully attentive to the historical legacies of humanism and their entanglements with the humanities and the humanitarian.1 The CFP for this special issue asks two related questions that I pursue here: “what good is the study of literature?” and “how does the turn to ethics position literary criticism in relation to politics?” It is not possible to answer these questions definitively. In this paper, I follow Brand’s lead into registering the visceral force of the kinds of global intimacies enumerated by Braidotti in order to ask what these practices imply for the political projects of citizenship and community in contemporary times. I argue that to fully grasp the implications of how Brand’s poetry engages and is engaged in these emerging global complicities, critics need to attend to the dynamics of the experiential dimensions of its affect as well as its explicit meaning.2 “On Poetry,” the last essay in Dionne Brand’s Bread Out of Stone, concludes: “Poetry is here, just here.
    [Show full text]
  • Livesay to a Conference on Her Work Held in the Offing at the College March 4-5
    Vol. 2, No. 4 March 1983 University of St. Jerome's College interpersonal relations, marriage and the family. It is an excellent preparation for those Mark your who have a crucial role in Family Life pro­ grams in the school and in the community," calendars ­ says John Theis, director of the program which is now in its twelfth year. Theis Alumni Picnic! expects about 200 people to be enrolled this The date has been set for an alumni reunion summer. picnic on Sunday, June 26, 1:00 p.m. at The Institute for Studies in Learning Waterloo Park.It has been two years since the Disabilities will be offered from July 4 to 22, College's last alumni gathering, and a picnic This Summer at providing courses at the introductory, in­ is a great reason to come together with old termediate and advanced levels, says pro­ friends and classmates. gram director John Orlando. A number of The College decided on a single-day event St. Jerome's visiting experts will participate in this rather than a weekend of activities as has The majority of summer courses to be offered summer's program. been done in the past. "We hope that this will at the University of Waterloo this year will be The Just Society, a credit course to be encourage more people to attend and that taught at St. Jerome's. A variety of full and offered July 4-22 by the Institute for Studies they will feel free to bring their families," half-credit courses in English, history, in Theological Renewal, will examine the says Rob Donelson, assistant to the registrar religious studies, psychology and philosophy involvement of the Roman Catholic and and one of the organizers.
    [Show full text]
  • C24 New Long Poem Anthology.Pdf
    T H E N E w L 0 N G P 0 E M ANTHOLOGY E D T E D B y SHARON THESEN T H E N E W LONG POEM :)LOGY ~ 111 ~111111 111111 11111111 1111 11111~ 1111111111 11111111 1111111 3 9345 00959985 7 CLC SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY LIBRARY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS PR 9058 N4785 1991 The New long poem anthology . T H E N E w LONG P 0 E M ANTHOLOGY E D T E D B Y SHARON TH ES EN COACH HOUSE PRESS · TORONTO For the selection and introduction, © Sharon Thesen, 1991 Published with the assistance of the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council. Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Main entry under title: The New Long Poem Anthology 1. Canadian poetry (English) - 20th century.* I. Thesen, Sharon, 1946- PS8279.N4 1991 C8u'.5408 C91-093228-3 PR9195.7.N4 1991 Cover photograph: Thaddeus Holownia "Abandoned Boats," Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, March 1986 Courtesy: Jane Corkin Gallery, Toronto ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I'd like to thank Michael Ondaatje for having the foresighr to pur rogecher the first Long Poem Anthology in 1979· Thanks also to Robin Blaser, Phyllis Webb and George Bowering, for rhe conversations. - S. T. The following selecrions were originally publi hed by Coach House Press and are reprinred in rhis anrhology with rhe kind permi sion of the aurhors: Blaser, Robin, "The Moch Poem," from The Long Poem Anthology, © 1979 by Robin Blaser. Bowering, George, "Elegy ine" and "Elegy Ten," from Kerrisdale Elegies, © 1984 by George Bowering. Brand, Dionne," o Language I eurral," from No Language Is Neutral, © 1990 by Dionne Brand.
    [Show full text]
  • Radical Utopian Politics in Dionne Brand's "No Language Is Neutral" and "Bread out of Stone"
    University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Graduate Studies Legacy Theses 2000 Voicing grace: Radical utopian politics in Dionne Brand's "No language is neutral" and "bread out of stone" Garrett, Brenda Garrett, B. (2000). Voicing grace: Radical utopian politics in Dionne Brand's "No language is neutral" and "bread out of stone" (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/13957 http://hdl.handle.net/1880/40590 master thesis University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca THE UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY Voicing Grace: Radical Utopian Politics in Dionne Brand's No Laneuaee is Neutral and Bread out of Stone Brenda Garrett A THESIS SUBMInED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH CALGARY, ALBERTA AUGUST, 2000 O Brenda Garrett 2000 National Library Bibliotheque nati~nale of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographic Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington OttawaON K1AON4 Ottawa ON KIA ON4 Canada Canada Your lYe Vme referenm Our lVe Norre retersnu, The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive Licence allowing the exclusive permettant a la National Library of Canada to Bibliotheque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sell reproduire, prgter, distribuer ou copies of ths thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette these sous paper or electronic formats.
    [Show full text]
  • Sheila Watson Fonds Finding Guide
    SHEILA WATSON FONDS FINDING GUIDE SPECIAL COLLECTIONS JOHN M. KELLY LIBRARY | UNIVERSITY OF ST. MICHAEL’S COLLEGE 113 ST. JOSEPH STREET TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA M5S 1J4 ARRANGED AND DESCRIBED BY ANNA ST.ONGE CONTRACT ARCHIVIST JUNE 2007 (LAST UPDATED SEPTEMBER 2012) TABLE OF CONTENTS TAB Part I : Fonds – level description…………………………………………………………A Biographical Sketch HiStory of the Sheila WatSon fondS Extent of fondS DeScription of PaperS AcceSS, copyright and publiShing reStrictionS Note on Arrangement of materialS Related materialS from other fondS and Special collectionS Part II : Series – level descriptions………………………………………………………..B SerieS 1.0. DiarieS, reading journalS and day plannerS………………………………………...1 FileS 2006 01 01 – 2006 01 29 SerieS 2.0 ManuScriptS and draftS……………………………………………………………2 Sub-SerieS 2.1. NovelS Sub-SerieS 2.2. Short StorieS Sub-SerieS 2.3. Poetry Sub-SerieS 2.4. Non-fiction SerieS 3.0 General correSpondence…………………………………………………………..3 Sub-SerieS 3.1. Outgoing correSpondence Sub-SerieS 3.2. Incoming correSpondence SerieS 4.0 PubliShing records and buSineSS correSpondence………………………………….4 SerieS 5.0 ProfeSSional activitieS materialS……………………………………………………5 Sub-SerieS 5.1. Editorial, collaborative and contributive materialS Sub-SerieS 5.2. Canada Council paperS Sub-SerieS 5.3. Public readingS, interviewS and conference material SerieS 6.0 Student material…………………………………………………………………...6 SerieS 7.0 Teaching material………………………………………………………………….7 Sub-SerieS 7.1. Elementary and secondary school teaching material Sub-SerieS 7.2. UniverSity of BritiSh Columbia teaching material Sub-SerieS 7.3. UniverSity of Toronto teaching material Sub-SerieS 7.4. UniverSity of Alberta teaching material Sub-SerieS 7.5. PoSt-retirement teaching material SerieS 8.0 Research and reference materialS…………………………………………………..8 Sub-serieS 8.1.
    [Show full text]
  • In the Archive of Queer Politics: Adrienne Rich and Dionne Brand Listening for Something
    In the archive of queer politics: Adrienne Rich and Dionne Brand Listening for Something Liana Borghi Università degli Studi di Firenze [email protected] Nel caso dei queer studies il punto fondamentale non è forse la resistenza critica alle categorie sessuali da cui si è costruiti? [The fundamental point of queer studies is it not the critical resistance to the sexual categories by which we are constructed?] (M. Pustianaz, 2009). Mother’s daughter who at ten years old knew she was queer (C. Moraga, 1983: ii). This paper endorses the suggestion that we push back the timeline of queer theory to the 1980s rooting it firmly in lesbian feminism despite the disclaimers and erasures of official queer theory. But rather than stating the obvious – i.e. that queer theory owes much to the lesbian movement – I would claim narrative space for a «reparative reading», and talk in terms of a «lesbian Queer». After the movement of radical lesbians in the 70s had settled down into visibility claims, identity politics and civil rights, it opened out into the fractals of the sex wars, butch and femme, S&M, and of lesbian AIDS projects alongside performance art and the bar scene – changing from a community, never singular but united by compact tales of coming out stories, to communities and diversities some of which eventually joined Queer Nation and Act Up alongside the GLT associations, as Arlene Stein has described in Sisters and Queers (1992). Looking back to those years, Adrienne Rich writes that «in the 1980s, AIDS catalyzed a new gay activism in outrage laced with mourning», and adds, quoting the poet and critic Essex Hemphill, that the epidemic pointed out that the «community» could no longer be surmised to be «one gender and one color» when the extreme cultural and economic differences produced such a higher death count among Black gay men (A.
    [Show full text]
  • Unabashed Canadian Poet' Dorothy Live
    IMPACT: International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Literature (IMPACT: IJRHAL) ISSN (P): 2347–4564; ISSN (E): 2321–8878 Vol. 8, Issue 8, Aug 2020, 27–40 © Impact Journals THE ‘FEMININE PREDICAMENT IN THE ‘UNABASHED CANADIAN POET’ DOROTHY LIVESAY Hyacinth Pink Professor, Science and Humanities, Kumaraguru College of Technology, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India Received: 05 Aug 2020 Accepted: 11 Aug 2020 Published: 20 Aug 2020 ABSTRACT The article explores the involvement of the work of Dorothy Livesay to Canadian modernist poetry during the 1940s and to creatively connect female subjectivity to a belated Canadian modernism which included female poets writing about themselves, their own gender and their belonging to Canada. Livesay's early work is motivated on the subjectivity of an emerging female-centred poetics inspired by feminist readings of Modernism. The feminist’s perspective on literature, creative or critical, whether in a third world country or elsewhere, has had to confront issues of similar persuasion: male- chauvinism, sexist bias, psychological and even physical exploitation, hegemonistic inclinations, and an utter disregard for the female’s psychological, cultural, familial and spiritual quests. KEYWORDS: Female Subjectivity, Male-Chauvinism, Sexist Bias, Psychological, Physical Exploitation, Hegemonistic Inclinations, Cultural, Familial and Spiritual Quests INTRODUCTION Canadian Feminist Literature is “a coat of many cultures”1 (Thompson, Lee Briscoe, (1981) -soft, prominent and strident. The voices emanating from Canada vary from the traditional but conscious of their selves to exclusively self- seeking feminists with a vengeance. The feminist’s perspective on literature, creative or critical, whether in a third world country or elsewhere, has had to confront issues of similar persuasion: male-chauvinism, sexist bias, psychological and even physical exploitation, hegemonistic inclinations, and utter disregard for the female’s psychological, cultural, familial and spiritual quests.
    [Show full text]
  • The Year That Was
    Kunapipi Volume 4 Issue 1 Article 14 1982 The year that was Anna Rutherford University of Aarhus, Denmark Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Rutherford, Anna, The year that was, Kunapipi, 4(1), 1982. Available at:https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol4/iss1/14 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] The year that was Abstract AUSTRALIA The two outstanding Australian books of the year are autobiographies, but they're even farther apart than their respective origins in Sydney and Perth. No doubt for many readers one of the disappointments of Patrick White's 'long awaited' Flaws £n the Glass Qonathan Cape) was the absence of an index. Potential victims and bystanders, salivating alike, will find no list of name' ' targets of this sharpest of Australian writers who admits he forgets nothing: no more than a few perfunctory and occasionally parodic footnotes. This journal article is available in Kunapipi: https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol4/iss1/14 The Year That Was AUSTRALIA The two outstanding Australian books of the year are autobiographies, but they're even farther apart than their respective origins in Sydney and Perth. No doubt for many readers one of the disappointments of Patrick White's 'long awaited' Flaws £n the Glass Qonathan Cape) was the absence of an index. Potential victims and bystanders, salivating alike, will find no list of 'name' targets of this sharpest of Australian writers who admits he forgets nothing: no more than a few perfunctory and occa­ sionally parodic footnotes.
    [Show full text]
  • Dalrev Vol67 Iss4 Pp425 435.Pdf (5.693Mb)
    Larry McDonald The Politics of Influence: Birney, Scott, Livesay and the Influence of Politics The immediate focus of this essay is the manner in which most criti­ cism of Dorothy Livesay, Frank Scott and Ear le Birney has worked to obscure the influence of politics on their writing. More specifically (because the actual extent of political influence must be set aside for the moment), my aim is to demonstrate that dominant critical approaches have foreclosed any possibility of political influence on the writing by disguising, diminishing or eliminating the role that politics played in their lives. The narrow question of how these writers have been packaged for general consumption is best appreciated, however, if viewed as representative of the way that criticism has neglected a key aspect of Canadian literary history. I refer to a suppressed tradition of affiliations, remarkable in both range and intensity, between Cana­ dian writers and socialist ideology. The affiliations between our writers and socialist thought have taken many different forms: some have declared their socialist sympa­ thies in essays and journalism (Archibald Lampman, Margaret Lau­ rence, Kenneth Leslie); some worked long and hard for left-wing organizations or political parties (Earle Birney for the Trotskyists, Dorothy Lives ay for the Communists, Frank Scott for the CCF I NDP, David Fennario for the Socialist Labour Party); some stood for politi­ cal office (F. P. Grove, A. M. Klein, Phyllis Webb, Robin Mathews); some were involved with literary journals that promoted a socialist aesthetic (John Sutherland, Irving Layton, Louis Dudek, Patrick Anderson, Milton Acorn, Al Purdy, Miriam Waddington, Margaret Atwood).
    [Show full text]
  • Overview of Marxism, Black Liberation, and Black Working-Class Organic Intellectuals
    THE DEVELOPMENT OF WORKING-CLASS ORGANIC INTELLECTUALS IN THE CANADIAN BLACK LEFT TRADITION: HISTORICAL ROOTS AND CONTEMPORARY EXPRESSIONS, FUTURE DIRECTIONS by Christopher Harris A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto © Copyright by Chris Harris 2011 THE DEVELOPMENT OF WORKING-CLASS ORGANIC INTELLECTUALS IN THE CANADIAN BLACK LEFT TRADITION: HISTORICAL ROOTS AND CONTEMPORARY EXPRESSIONS, FUTURE DIRECTIONS “Doctor” of Education (2011) Christopher Harris Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education University of Toronto Abstract This thesis explores the revolutionary adult education learning dimensions in a Canadian Black anti-racist organization, which continues to be under-represented in the Canadian Adult Education literature on social movement learning. This case study draws on detailed reflection based on my own personal experience as a leader and member of the Black Action Defense Committee (BADC). The analysis demonstrates the limitations to the application of the Gramscian approach to radical adult education in the non-profit sector, I will refer to as the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC) drawing on recent research by INCITE Women of Colour! (2007). This study fills important gaps in the new fields of studies on the NPIC and its role in the cooptation of dissent, by offering the first Canadian study of a radical Black anti-racist organization currently experiencing this. This study fills an important gap in the social movement and adult education literature related to the legacy of Canadian Black Communism specifically on the Canadian left.
    [Show full text]