The Age of Independence Secession, Power, and the Problem of Breakaway Regimes
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Madeleine Thien on Miriam Toews PAGE 20 $6.50 Vol. 26, No. 7 September 2018 GEORGE ANDERSON The Age of Independence Secession, power, and the problem of breakaway regimes PLUS OONAGH FITZGERALD & COLIN CROUCH Brexit and the long, baffling goodbye ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: MYRA BLOOM The lie of Lolita DEBORAH CAMPBELL Feeding our inner troll ANDY LAMEY Post-truth’s upside Publications Mail Agreement #40032362. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to LRC, Circulation Dept. PO Box 8, Station K, Toronto, ON M4P 2G1 New from University of Toronto Press “Original, careful research combined with insightful analysis makes this book an important contribution to our understanding of popular culture and human variation.” –Bob Bogdan, Syracuse University “Jane Nicholas has produced a significant addition to our understanding of the history of Canadian entertainment, attitudes towards children, and the social construction of able-bodiedness.” –Keith Walden, Trent University DISPLACING BLACKNESS Planning, Power, and Race in Twentieth-Century Halifax Ted Rutland “Extremely well written, Fighting Fat “Readers familiar with the “An intellectually astute and focuses on gender, motherhood, and Pentagon Papers history and its provocative collection of critical ethnicity, and how the culture of revelations about the deliberate studies of difference…a deeply weight loss acts upon these groups.” US escalation of the Vietnam War focused perspective on local will find resonance in Rutland’s resistance.” –Esther Rothblum bombshell narrative about Halifax.” San Diego State University –Roland Sintos Coloma –Evelyn C. White Wayne State University Atlantic Books Today utorontopress.com Literary Review of Canada 340 King Street East, 2nd Floor Toronto ON M5A 1K8 email: [email protected] reviewcanada.ca Charitable number: 848431490RR0001 To donate, visit reviewcanada.ca/support Vol. 26, No. 7 • September 2018 EDITOR IN CHIEF Sarmishta Subramanian [email protected] ART DIRECTOR 3 The Long, Baffling Goodbye 21 60. Rachel Tennenhouse Oonagh Fitzgerald in conversation A poem ASSISTANT EDITOR Bardia Sinaee with Colin Crouch Kim Trainor ASSOCIATE EDITOR 4 From Ruba’iyat for the 22 The Opposite of Silence Beth Haddon A poet’s dialogues with herself and the world POETRY EDITOR Time of Apricots Moira MacDougall A poem The Blue Clerk and Theory by Dionne Brand Paul Barrett COPY EDITOR Basma Kavanagh Patricia Treble 8 Click-worthy 24 Absolute Power CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Before safety bicycles and dress reform there Mohamed Huque, Andy Lamey, Molly Living with our inner troll, and our inner Peacock, Robin Roger, Judy Stoffman was a French-Canadian strong woman on wheels guinea pig PROOFREADERS Muscle on Wheels by M. Ann Hall Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Suzanne Mantha, Heather Schultz, Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier and Laura Robinson Tyler Willis Reporter by Seymour M. Hersh ADVERTISING/SALES Deborah Campbell 26 Flashes of Light Michael Wile A dreaded diagnosis, and what we gain [email protected] 9 Train Wrecks, Rare Fossils in losing ourselves BUSINESS MANAGER Be With by Mike Barnes and A poem Paul McCuaig All Things Consoled by Elizabeth Hay Marion Quednau BOARD OF DIRECTORS Brian Bethune Tom Kierans, O.C., Don McCutchan, 13 The Age of Independence Trina McQueen, O.C., Jaime Watt A theory of territory in the era of 29 Against Time, and Beauty CORPORATE SECRETARY Two enduring scientific ideas take a thumping Vali Bennett Kurdistan and Catalonia The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli and ADVISORY COUNCIL A Political Theory of Territory Lost in Math by Sabine Hossenfelder Michael Adams, Alan Broadbent, by Margaret Moore Colby Cosh C.M., Chris Ellis, Carol Hansell, Donald George Anderson Macdonald, P.C., C.C., Don Rickerd, Letters C.M., Rana Sarkar, Mark Sarner, 17 Invention of a Nymphet 31 Bernard Schiff Gary Barwin, Douglas E. Cowan, The hidden origins and afterlife of a masterpiece POETRY SUBMISSIONS Adam Nayman The Real Lolita by Sarah Weinman For guidelines, please see reviewcanada.ca. Myra Bloom LRC design concept by Jackie Young/INK 32 Lies and Other Alternatives Founded in 1991 by P.A. Dutil 18 Visitant A column The LRC is published 10 times a year by the Literary Andy Lamey Review of Canada Charitable Organization. A poem ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION RATES Michael Kenyon Individuals in Canada $56/year plus GST/HST. (Libraries and institutions in Canada $68/year plus GST/HST.) Outside Canada, please pay $86/year for 20 ‘This Is Our Manifesto’ individuals, or $98 for libraries and institutions. After a community’s crisis of humanity, SUBSCRIPTIONS AND CIRCULATION a reimagining Literary Review of Canada Women Talking by Miriam Toews P.O. Box 8, Station K, Toronto ON M4P 2G1 [email protected] Madeleine Thien 416-932-5081 • reviewcanada.ca ©2018 The Literary Review of Canada. All rights, including translation into other languages, are reserved by the publisher in Canada, the United States, Great Britain and all other countries participating in the Poems in this issue are from manuscripts to be published this fall. Universal Copyright Convention, the International Copyright Convention and the Pan-American Copyright Convention. Nothing in this publication may be repro- duced without the written permission of the publisher. ISSN 1188-7494 Michael George Haddad is an Ottawa-based freelance illustrator, and an art director at The Literary Review of Canada is indexed in the Canadian Literary Periodicals Index and the Beau’s Brewing Co. His illustrations have appeared in Wired, the New York Times, and the Globe and Mail. Canadian Index and is distributed by Disticor and His website is michaelgh.com. Magazines Canada. 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We acknowledge the financial Funding Acknowledgements We acknowledge the assistance Grant Reuber support of the Government of the OMDC Magazine Fund, 1927-2018 of Canada through the an initiative of Ontario Media Canada Periodical Fund of Development Corporation. the Department of Canadian The LRC mourns the loss of Heritage. a longtime advisor and friend, who will be missed. an Ontario government agency un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario September 2018 reviewcanada.ca 1 “THE REAL THING”Jane Hirshfield Blackbird Song by Randy Lundy “Randy Lundy has entered the place where the masters reside.” Patrick Lane, author of Washita “Randy Lundy’s poems bring forward the spirit of his Cree ancestry, and place our species humbly among the creatures of Earth—who are all observed with deep reverence and perceptive care. We should be grateful to him for bringing his wise, wry, visionary, large-hearted meditations into language, and for demonstrating the need for ‘seeing with another kind of eye.’ A book to read and be read by.” Don McKay, author of Strike/Slip Participation made possible through Creative Saskatchewan’s Market and Export Development Grant Program. 2 LRC AD BLACKBIRD SONG U of R Press.indd 1 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review2018-08-16 of Canada 11:09 AM INTErviEW The Long, Baffling Goodbye Oonagh Fitzgerald in conversation with Colin Crouch n a summer rife with Brexit drama, Boris Johnson encapsulated the mood of things Iwhen he resigned, with characteristic flair, from his post as foreign secretary. The Brexit “dream is dying,” he wrote in his July 9 letter to Prime Minister Theresa May, some two years after Britain voted to leave the European Union. Johnson was one of several pro-Brexit ministers and senior politicians to resign after May’s plans for a soft Brexit were adopted. Six months before the Brexit deadline of March 29, 2019, and a month before EU leaders meet to discuss the withdrawal treaty, turmoil still reigns. By mid August, echoing a growing theme of “Bregret,” the Independent’s petition for a second referendum had more than 500,000 signatures, and EU officials had expressed concerns about the pos- sible collapse of the May government. Who better to reflect on this ongoing tumult and the path ahead than the British political sci- entist and sociologist who coined the term “post democracy”? Colin Crouch, professor emeritus of Many champions of ‘hard Brexit’ truly believed the EU would collapse if Britain left it. the University of Warwick, has explored the pre- A DETAIL FROM A WORK BY BANKSY IN DOVER, ENGLAND, 2017 scient idea in books including Coping with Post Democracy (2000). In The Globalization Backlash, is heading, Colin? It looks so bleak and there’s this It was beyond ironic that they wanted to do all forthcoming from Polity Books in December, he sense of inevitability about falling out of the EU this without even involving Parliament. They took tackles recent trends toward economic isolation- rather than an orderly, well planned Brexit. the position that because international law com- ism, and debunks challenges mounted to globalism Colin Crouch: Well, the whole thing has been a mitments are made through executive action in by both right and left. mess from the start because the original proposition the U.K. (as in Canada), the executive can simply He spoke with Oonagh Fitzgerald, director of the to leave the European Union was not a proposal unmake international law without Parliament’s international law research program at the Centre from a government. It was a referendum campaign, involvement. But EU law only took effect within for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) in which meant no one involved in it was responsible the U.K. because Parliament enacted the European Waterloo, Ontario. Fitzgerald, who has also been a for holding any position. The policy of “remain” Communities Act in 1972. Since then, EU law has special advisor to Justice Canada for international was clear enough, but “leave the EU” could be proliferated and fundamentally changed the law of law, examined Brexit’s wide-ranging repercussions, associated with about twenty different possibilities, the United Kingdom.