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The Undiscovered Country: Essays In T H E UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY Cultural Dialectics series editor: Raphael Foshay The difference between subject and object slices through subject as well as through object. theodore adorno Cultural Dialectics provides an open arena in which to debate questions of cul- ture and dialectic — their practices, their theoretical forms, and their relations to one another and to other spheres and modes of inquiry. Approaches that draw on any of the following are especially encouraged: continental philoso- phy, psychoanalysis, the Frankfurt and Birmingham schools of cultural theory, deconstruction, gender theory, postcoloniality, and interdisciplinarity. series titles Northern Love: An Exploration of Canadian Masculinity Paul Nonnekes Making Game: An Essay on Hunting, Familiar Things, and the Strangeness of Being Who One Is Peter L. Atkinson Valences of Interdisciplinarity: Theory, Pedagogy, Practice Edited by Raphael Foshay Imperfection Patrick Grant The Undiscovered Country: Essays in Canadian Intellectual Culture Ian Angus T H E UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY E S S AY S I N CANADIAN INTELLECTUAL CuLtuRE IAN ANGUS Copyright © 2013 Ian Angus Published by AU Press, Athabasca University 1200, 10011 – 109 Street, Edmonton, AB T5j 3s8 ISBN 978-1 -927356-32-6 (print) 978-1 -927356-33-3 (PDF) 978-1 -927356-34-0 (epub) A volume in Cultural Dialectics ISSN 1915-836X (print) 1915-8378 (digital) Cover and interior design by Natalie Olsen, Kisscut Design. Printed and bound in Canada by Marquis Book Printers. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Angus, Ian H. (Ian Henderson) The undiscovered country : essays in Canadian intellectual culture / Ian Angus. (Cultural dialectics, ISSN 1915-836X) Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued also in electronic formats. ISBN 978-1-927356-32-6 1. Canada — Intellectual life — 21st century. 2 . Canada — Civilization — 21st century — Philosophy. 3. Political culture — Canada. 4. Intellectuals — Canada. I . Title. II. Series: Cultural dialectics FC95.5.A54 2013 306.0971 C2013-901187-0 We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities. Assistance provided by the Government of Alberta, Alberta Multimedia Development Fund. This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons licence, Attribution–Noncommer- cial–No Derivative Works 2 .5 Canada: see www.creativecommons.org. The text may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that credit is given to the original author. To obtain permission for uses beyond those outlined in the Creative Commons licence, please contact AU Press, Athabasca University, at [email protected]. dedicated to George Grant, Roman Onufrijchuk, Rowly Lorimer, Robbie Schwarzwald, Myrna Kostash, and Claude Couture, in gratitude for helping me find my way in Canadian studies understood as articulation of the pressing questions through engagement in one’s own place CO N T E N TS Preface ix PART I 1 Introduction: The Instituting Polemos of T H E English Canadian Culture 3 DOM I N A N T 2 Charles Taylor’s Account of Modernity 15 H E G E L I A NISM OF C A N ADIAN 3 James Doull and the Philosophic Task of Our Time 31 I N T E LLE C TUA L 4 C. B. Macpherson’s Developmental Liberalism 41 LIFE 5 Athens and Jerusalem? Philosophy and Religion in George Grant’s Thought 49 PART I I 6 Introduction: National Identity as Solidarity 79 IS C ANADA 7 Winthrop Pickard Bell on the Idea of a Nation 85 A NATION? 8 Canadian Studies: Retrospect and Prospect 99 9 Gad Horowitz and the Political Culture of English Canada 121 10 Empire, Border, Place: A Critique of Hardt and Negri’s Concept of Empire 141 11 The Difference Between Canadian and American Political Cultures Revisited 161 PART III 12 Introduction: Philosophy, Culture, Critique 177 L O C ATIVE 13 Social Movements Versus the Global Neoliberal THOUGHT Regime 187 14 Continuing Dispossession: Clearances as a Literary and Philosophical Theme 209 APPENDIX 1 Jean-Philippe Warren, “Are Multiple Nations the Solution? An Interview with Ian Angus” 227 APPENDIX 2 Bob Hanke, “Conversation on the University: An Interview with Ian Angus” 245 Notes 269 Publication Credits 287 Index 289 P R E FAC E The essays collected here develop several themes regarding Canadian intellectuals and culture. This work is a companion to my two other books on English Canada.1 It is organized into three parts, focusing first on critiques of other thinkers, then on critical analyses of English Canadian political culture,* before closing with a final part consisting of material written after the two other books that can stand as an independent articulation of my own views. The text is thus organized to supplement my own arguments “negatively,” as it were, through cri- tique rather than positive argumentation in the first two parts, so that my own position becomes apparent gradually through critical engage- ment to arrive at the final articulations. Nevertheless, since the essays and lectures were written separately, they can be read individually by those with specific interest in one of the topics. In general, they have not been revised, apart from the correction of errors and small additions or elisions that reflect the changed context and time of publication. There is thus some overlap between the essays that could not be avoided. The introductory chapters to each part, however, include some new material outlining the unity of the essays in order to clarify the selection and organization of this collection and, in some cases, making brief refer- ence to new scholarship. * It is not always possible to clearly distinguish when one is referring to “English Canada” and when to “Canada” outright, for reasons that are rooted in the constitution of the phenomenon itself. Whenever possible, I do so. By “English Canada” I mean that part of Canada in which the language of ordinary interaction, and therefore most common cultural activity, is English. No reference whatever to the ethnic or racial origin of the individuals is meant. By “Canada” I mean the whole political-cultural-state entity, which comprises the three constituent units of First Nations, the francophone-Québec nation, and “English Canada”— which may or may not be a nation in the sense of a distinct people with a common way of life and belief. ix Part i begins with a brief sketch of the Hegelian confidence and pro- gressivism that has dominated Canadian intellectual life. This confidence is not always the direct object of my critique, but it nearly always suf- fers at least collateral damage in the critiques of the thinkers addressed. Part ii focuses on national identity and political culture, including the role of Canadian studies in these. My own conception as articulated in Part iii is at once more uto- pian and more tragic than that of the first two parts. I have thus used as the title for the collection a phrase taken from one of the most famous tragic speeches in English-speaking culture: Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy (Act 3, Scene 1, lines 77–83): Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country, from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? A fardel is a pack or a bundle, a burden. For Canadian intellectual culture, the burden is its origin in empire. It is widely recognized that English Canadian political culture has focused on community and plurality, but I argue that this conception contains the risk of becoming simply apologetic and ideological if it ignores the critique of empire that has been equally constitutive of its distinctive character. English Canadian culture is thus caught between its origin in empire and its attempt to adequately critique that origin. English Canadian intellectual culture acquits itself well when it consciously articulates the project of throw- ing off empire and judges critically failures to so do. We are delayed before this ultimate possibility that the culture holds out to us as a goal by a fear that is also itself constitutive of the culture: the fear of death, the fear that what is distinctive about Canadian intellec- tual culture will not survive and perhaps even should not survive — that we will be suffused within empire yet again. This fear leads us to bear the fardel and to slink from confrontation with the ultimate possibility x Preface that the culture places in front of us. Thus, in the book’s first two parts, these essays are critical, negative, in the service of a clarity promised. Its third part speaks with a voice increasingly incapable of delivery in the public realm. To refuse to bear the fardels courts a confrontation with death — the Great Unknown source of hope and fear entwined in tragedy. The two appendixes deal with more practical motivations and issues in response to the probing questions of two expert critics. I am grateful to Raphael Foshay, Pamela MacFarland Holway, and Athabasca University Press for their interest in publishing these essays in a single collection, which I hope allows their critical unity to become clear. The dedication expresses some of the debts that have made my work in Canadian thought possible. Preface xi PART I T H E D O MIN A N T H E G E LI A N ISM O F CANA DIA N I NTE LL E C T UA L L I F E 1 This first part of this collection brings together four essays that critically analyze Introduction: the work of major thinkers in Canada.* The background for these analyses is the The Instituting Hegelianism that has dominated Canadian intellectual life.** The essay on Charles Tay- Polemos lor criticizes his Hegelian conception of the modern world.
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