Shawna Dempsey and Lorrie Millan survey the wilderness as Lesbian Park Rangers. Performance Piece by Shawna Dempsey and Lorrie Millan, 1997. Photo: Don Lee, Banff Centre for the Arts.

VOLUME 20, NUMBER 2 5 Presenti&+IFT*UU ? ienne g& rH ;t "PS"\g'ig *;ujA a,.. ;gb &.,U *W?. - $3P

L'auteure explore les contenus mt'diatiques sur la rt'cente prompted author Margaret Atwood to comment, nomination dxdrienne Clarkson au poste de Gouverneur- gt'nt'raldu , et dt'couvre desfafons d'articuler legenre She's been given a scandalous, rocky ride in the press. et l'ethniequandils 'agitdedeFnirfa nationalitt'canadienne. It's been really horrible up to now. And they would never do that to a man.. . . She has had some press that I would consider basically sexist and racist. (qtd. in My first and until recently, only encounterwith images of "Installation": A3) Adrienne Clarkson was of flipping past her CBC arts program about ten years ago. I remember the moment Although media stories were supposed to shed light on well because my family had just immigrated here, and the "real" Adrienne Clarkson, they in fact prove more Clarkson's program came on the first time I turned on our informative in revealing how gender and race are collabo- TV. We had only a small black and white television set ratively articulated in the production of discourses that then, and I was sorely disappointed to discover that my define Canadian nationality. In telling the story of viewing choices that afternoon were limited to two sports Clarkson, newspaper articles demonstrated that-as events and this Art showwhich seemed to be in equal parts McClintock, Yuval-Davis (cited in Wobbe), and other dull and pretentious. The next time I noticed Clarkson on feminist scholars have argued-notions of nation and TV was during her introduction as Canada's new nationality require and reproduce particular assumptions by Prime Minister Jean Chretien. This time, my reaction about, and organizations of, gender and race. In this essay was quite different. The moment Clarkson declared, "I I am not interested in finding the "real" Adrienne came to Canada as a refugee" I was, frankly, surprised (I Clarkson-this, to me, is almost beside the point. I will was not aware that she was "Chinese") and delighted. instead consider how both the "negative" and "positive"

How brave, I thought, to appoint- - a Chinese-Canadian reactions to her appointment invoke race and gender in immigrant Governor-General, in the midst of all the inventing the nation of Canada. Some narratives, like (racist) outrage over the supposed Boat refugee "crisis" on those published in Conrad Black's National Post, emerge the West coast. How splendid, I believed, that she would as anxieties about gendered- and racialized difference that so adamantly identiG her "refugee roots." appear to threaten dominant, stabilized categories of In the days that followed the announcement, a great Canadian nationality. Others, such as the Prime Minis- deal ofink, paper, and airtime was dedicated to journalists ter's representation of Clarkson as a and commentators contemplating woman, a "reflection of the diversity and inclusiveness of her "curious" appointment. Those our society"(McIlroyA3), attempt to confine and contain In pointing of US who knew very little about her difference within a nationalist politic. Both responses are UtC la rkSO lS before theappointment, who might alike however, in that neither significantly undermines have never watched any of her the gendered or racialized character of Canadian nation- ethnicity and shows, were now unable to avoid ality. gender, Chretien the most intimate details ofher life. Nationalism is, first and foremost, the construction of We were told about her failed first borders, about marking who belongs and who does not. In was aware his marriage and her quickie new one, pointing out Clarkson's ethnicity and gender when he choice ruptured her "tragic" estrangement from her introduced her as Canada's next Viceroy, Chretien was a dominant daughters, her uppity ways and clearly aware that his choice ruptured, at least symboli- exorbitant spending habits, her cally, a dominant conception of Canadian nationals as conception ambition and cunning, and her white people. Many commentators were outraged that a of Canadian harassment of one neighbor, one woman of colour would assume the post of Governor- TorontoSunwriterimplied, to death General. Referring to the tired thesis so often invoked nationals as (Woodcock). This interrogation almost anytime someone who is not white and male white people. into her personal life was unprec- achieves success, several journalists opined that Clarkson's edented in Canadian politics, and appointment has more to do with her gender and race than

6 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESILES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME Clarkson

anything else. Globe and Mail columnist Hugh Winsor right" to extend her house. "The case dragged on through wrote that she was picked for the post because "it was time the courts for two years," Woodcock says, "during which for a woman." Clarkson also offered an additional "bo- time the poor woman died." Ono's to blame for the death nus" to the Prime Minister, he stated, in the form of "her ofthe Beatles, her husband and '60s culture, Clarkson for Chinese ancestry." "At this rate," Sun columnist an elderly- neighbor.- Connie Woodcock surmised, Just as Ling's sexual prowess won her a job at Ally's law firm, Clarkson's fetishized "Asian-ness" makes for a good the next Governor-General will have to be gay and national symbol. Nationalism is, after all, usually repre- handicapped-an opportunity, perhaps, for Svend sented through the visible ritual organization of fetish Robinson, should he break a leg or require glasses. objects-flags, uniforms, airplane logos, national cui- Gay, handicapped and Inuit would be nice. sines, and architectures, etc. Far from being purely phallic icons, McClintock says, "fetishes embody crises in social Added Macleans scribe Allan Fotheringham, value, which are projected onto and embodied in . . . impassioned objects" (374). It's been an open secret in media and political circles Worst of all, like Ono, Ling, and Imelda Marcos, that my old buddy, not a woman to trifle with, has Clarkson is "another" of those Asian women who thinks been lobbying heavily in for either the cec she's better than the rest of"usn common folk. None ofthe Presidency or . Visible minority, political media coverage of Clarkson's appointment and correctness, all that. inauguration has failed to mention just how uppity she really is, as Winsor's remarks try to make clear: Critics of Clarkson have also tapped into dominant North American narratives about Asian women to express Ms. Clarkson obviously has the intelligence, back- opposition to her appointment. Recreated as our veryown ground and bearing for the job. But as they used to say Yoko Ono, Clarkson is seen to have ridden the coattails of around the CBC she never carried the sticks. That's a her spouse to achieve her ambition. Where Ono had reference to the tradition in television crews that the Lennon to supposedly provide her career, Clarkson, we "talent"-the reporter, host or interviewer-assists were told by none other than Chretien, could be Gover- the technicians burdened with equipment by carry- nor-General because her husband was a political thinker ing the "sticks." and could help her (McIlroy AI). On the day following Chretien's announcement, one Globe and Mail headline "Adrienne Clarkson is 'madame' read, "Clarkson has major job asset in husband" (M). and you're not," declared the head- Critics of Lennon was said to abandon the Beatles for Ono; the lineofone front-page Poststorywhich Cl a rkSOnhave TorontoStar's Dalton Camp worrieswhether John Ralston revealed that Rideau Hall officials Saul will deny his career for Clarkson. were to use that title in addressing also tapped Like Ling, the Asian-American lawyer on TV's Ally her (Foot 1). This was of course not inf 0 dam i nanf McBeal, Clarkson is callous, manipulative, and new-previous Governor-General unemotionally attached, as evidenced, especially, by her Jeanne Sauve made the same request, North American decision to give up custody of her children twenty years and as Gerda Hnatyshyn, the spouse narratives ago. Suggests one Postwriter, "for many women that price of former Governor-General Ray about Asian would be too high, but for the ambitious and career- Hnatyshyn pointed out to a startled bound Adrienne Clarkson it probably was not" (Sexton Post reporter, "she'll be called Excel- women to 1999b). On Ally McBeal, Ling is famous for attacking or lency in any event. That's what Ray express suingjust about anyonewho does anything to her. Clarkson and I were called"(Sexton 1999a). is, in the words of Toronto Sun columnist Connie Wood- Another writer opined that Clarkson 0ppo~itionto cock, "quarrelsome." Woodcock too repeats the story is SO hateful ofreporters that "she has her a pp0intment. about Clarkson and Ralston Saul disputing a "neighbor's been heard to say that she will burn

VOLUME 20, NUMBER 2 7 all her private papers rather than let the press get hold of "nations are frequently figured through the iconography them" (Sexton 1999b). Indeed, so venomous have some of familial and domestic space." Developing Frantz Fanon's responses been to Clarkson's appointment that one To- assertion that "thecharacteristics ofthe family are projected ronto Sun writer actually took offense, at least to the sexist onto the social environment" (358) of the nation, (not racist) undertone of the reporting (Sonmor). McClintock suggests that the family trope is important to One would think that all this fuss over Clarkson's nationalism in at least two ways. It offers both "a 'natural' identity might mean that her appointment is in fact figure for sanctioning national hierarchy within a putative actually threatening to the "normal" order of things. To organic unity of interests," and "a 'natural' trope for some extent, it is true that having a Chinese-Canadian figuring national time" (358). Governor-General shakes-up notions of Canadian na- The rather extensive attention to Clarkson's "failed" tionality to some. But despiteall theattention to Clarkson's relationship with her daughters not only reveals mass sex and ethnicity, the appointment of a woman to a media's sexism in covering politics (which reporter asked symbolic (rather than actively political) post is not as Mike Harris about his children when he got divorced? ground-breaking as it might appear to be, especially in the Who has asked about Bill Clinton's relationship with way that it seems threatening to her critics. Usually daughter Chelsea?) but it also calls attention to the way in excluded from full citizenship, women, says Anne which women are represented as producers of the nation. McClintock, "are subsumed symbolically into the na- In taking on the role of Governor-General, Clarkson is tional body politic as its boundary and metaphorical effectively cast as Mother of Canada. Calling her a "bad limit" (354). (Canada does, of course, have a Queen.) (biological) mother" thus undermines her suitability for Women, McClintock says, are "typically constructed as the post of Governor-General. Clarkson's ethnicity, ac- the symbolic bearers of the nation but are denied any cording- to her critics, makes her a bad mother too. A direct relation to national agency" (354-355). As Elleke much-published remark (the Posthas run it several times) Boehmer notes, the "motherland" of male nationalism is that of Kenneth Lieblich, the former chairman of the may "not signify 'home' and 'source' to women." She says section of the Monarchist League of Canada. that the male role in nationalist scenario is typically He said that the choice of Ms. Clarkson "degrades Her "metonymic"; that is, men are contiguous with each other Majesty, the office of governor-general and Canada as a and with the national whole. Women by contrast, appear whole" (Gillis). As Robert Young's work on culture, race, "in a metaphoric or symbolic role" (qtd. in McClintock and hybridity, and McClintock's analysis of soap have 354-355). The appointment of a woman to a symbolic determined, non-white peoples have historically been post like Governor-General poses no challenge to this accused of "degrading" or "dirtying" the nation, particu- dichotomy. larly in terms of sex and reproduction. As a non-white Arecurring theme in the commentaries about Clarkson's head-of-nation, Clarkson's appointment "degrades" the appointment- - is her failure as a mother. Indeed, so much very idea of nationality which is so dependent on white1 fuss has been raised about the former broadcaster's "es- black binarism. trangement" from her daughters that in a November 6 Negative reaction to Clarkson's appointment has been article, "Adrienne Clarkson's Painful Separation," writer clearly informed by racismlsexism. In the case ofthe Post's Rosemary Sexton (1999b) acknowledges that she risks quite malicious coverage, racist and sexist discourses have "flogging a dead horse" in bringing up the matter once been summoned in the pursuit of its publisher's personal again. In her article, Sexton tries to battle with the Prime Minister (Chretien blocked an offer an apparently more balanced appointment of Post publisher Conrad Black to Britain's Despite a1 l the view of Clarkson's relationship: Upper House). Atwood is correct: Clarkson has been attention to subject to "racist and sexist" press. But the "positive" To be fair, Adrienne Clarkson reactions often also fail to challenge-and may well serve Clarkson's sex and herself is less than forthcoming" to maintain-gendered and racialized notions of Cana- about her relationship, or lack dian nationality. For example, the Prime Minister's and ethnicitv,J the of it, with her daughters. When others' celebration of her sex is problematic. We already appointment of a asked about them, she either have a foreign Queen Mother; is Clarkson's sex supposed woman to a refuses to answer or to make her a good, local Mother of Canada? "Welcom- symbolic post un~haracteristicallybursts into ing" her to thc family-nation of Canada does not de- tears. No doubt, as she claims, stabilize sexist or racist relations of power in Canada; is not as the pain is too great. As well, she indeed, it may well work to reinforce them. McClintock ground-breaking may be deeply ashamed that in says, this one area of her life, the as it might personal area, she has failed. The metaphoric depiction of social hierarchy as appear to be. natural and familial-the "national family," the global As McClintock points out, "family of nations," the colony as a "family of black

8 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESILES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME children ruled over by a white fathern-depended in meetings and functions for immigrant and community this way on the prior naturalizing of the social organizations across Canada henceforth as a "role model." subordination of women and children within the In some immigrant quarters, her presence will evoke the domestic sphere. (358) same kind ofenthusiasm that I experienced when I saw the first announcement on television. There's some kind of The idea is that the welfare of its parts (women, non- vindication in seeing a non-white woman in a "power- whites, for example) is supposed to be served by the ful"-even if "only" ceremonial-role. But this kind of welfare of the nation-family as a whole. Unequal relations celebration too is extremely problematic. In declaring between a nation-family's parts are therefore deemed Clarkson's development "from refugee to G-G," as the "natural." Having- a woman-of-colour Governor-General Toronto Sun noted, Chretien and others have told her may be understood as an integrationist strategy which story as a representativeone. That is, Clarkson has achieved, symbolically legitimizes social inequality. as the Toronto Star's Judy Steed put it, "a classic Canadian McClintock's second point about the use of family in dream." "Work, ambition and tragedy," Steed's article figuring time is also relevant in an analysis of coverage of opened, shaped this "immigrant's rise to be Governor- Clarkson's appointment. Deniz Kandiyoti argues that General." The sub-text is, ofcourse, that with a little hard nationalism, work, allimmigrants can achieve the same kind ofsuccess. Any failure to do so, therefore, has less to do with systemic presents itselfboth as a modern project that melts and racism in Canada than with the individual immigrant's transforms traditional attachments in favor of new character himlherself. identities and as a reflection of authentic cultural As immigrants and feminists, we can take some joy in values culled from the depths of a communal past. Clarkson's appointment-if, for no other reason than to (qtd. in McClintock 358) see Conrad Black et al. bemused, and even to feel that white, patriarchal Canadian nationalism is threatened. Representing a "new" nationalism in that she is neither But we must remember too, that nationalism, even when white nor male, but holding an "old" traditional office, represented by a liberal woman ofcolour, is still conceived Clarkson's appointment resolves the "temporal anomaly" through an articulation of "race" and gender which will within nationalism. not, in the end, serve most of us well. According to NiraYuval-Davis and Floya Anthias there are five ways in which women participate in ethnic and Andil Gosine holdc a SSHRC doctoral Fellowship at York national processes. Women have been located as "biological University. reproducers," "reproducers of the boundaries of ethnic1 nationalgroups," "transmittersofits culture," "(symbolic) References signifiers of ethniclnational differences" and participants in the national struggle (qtd. in Wobbe 91). Clarkson's Camp, Dalton. "Vice-regal couple won't be boring." significance- derives from her symbolic value as "an Toronto Star, September 15, 1999: A3 immigrant woman." The ways in which Clarkson has "Clarkson has major job asset in husband" The Globe and been presented in the media have clearly not dislocated Mail, September 9, 1999. any of these phenomena. Foot, Richard. "Adrienne Clarkson is 'Madame' and This is not to say, however, that her appointment makes You're Not." The National Post, October 5, 1999: 1 no difference at all. There are ways in which ruptures in Fotheringham, Allan. "Get Her to the Church in Time" dominant gendered and racialized narratives about Cana- Toronto Sun, September 1 1, 1999:15 dian nationalism do appear. The installation of a non- Gillis, Charlie. "Monarchists scold media over Clarkson white Governor-General sends the message, at the very attacks." Nationalpost, October 28, 1999. least, that non-white people have rights to Canadian "Installation." The National Post, October 8, 1999: A3. nationality and citizenship-albeit if this membership is McClintock, Anne, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and determined by one's class and ability to integrate into the Sexuality in the ColonialConquest.New York: Routledge, dominant francophone and anglophone culture. Her 1995. appointment.. undermines the racist and sexist attacks by McIlroy, Anne. "A Dash of Clarkson, A Pinch of Saul." those who believe non-white people cannot be Canadian The Globe andMail, September 9, 1999: Al-A3. and, interestingly, has even encouraged some Monar- Sexton, Rosemary. "Rosemary Sexton Interviews Gerda chists to re-think their continued support for colonial ties Hnatyshyn, whose husband Ramon was Governor- to Britain (even if this is obviously motivated by racist General from 1990 to 1995." National Post Friday, thinking). October 8, 1999a: B1 1. Clarkson's name will surely now be called-and justi- Sexton, Rosemary. "Adrienne Clarkson's Painful fiably so, because her ~ersonalachievements are quite re- Separation." National Post. November 6, 1999b. markable, whatever class advantages she possessed-at Sonmor, Jean. "Clarkson is vilified for a bit of ambition."

VOLUME 20, NUMBER 1 9 Toronto Sun September l l, 1999: 5. Steed, Judy. "A classic Canadian Dream." Toronto Star October 6, 1999: Al. WANDA HURREN Winsor, Hugh. "A predictable choice and an easy name for journalists to spell." The GlobeandMail,September Borderlands 8, 1999. Wobbe, Theresa. "The Boundaries of Community." CrossJires:Nationalism, Racism and Gender in . Helma Lutz, Ann Phoenix and Nira Yuval-Davis, Eds. do not be fooled London: Pluto Press for the European Forum of Left into believing Feminists, 1995. borderlines Woodcock, Connie. "Thec-G:Who Really Cares" Toronto Sun, September l l, 1999: 15. are imaginary Young, Robert. Hybrirdity in Theory, Cuture and Race. lines New York: Routledge, 1995. on maps and nothing else they are real MARIE CLAUDE PRATTE I know a place a borderline between where WOcountries end Le vent paresse il est absent et les voitures passent there obstruant l'autoroute is a space et les fumkes des cheminees a borderland s'epoumonent dans le ciel convexe wheel tracks in a ditch Je suis en train de perdre we used to go there ma t@teet mes reflexes on warn summer evenings ma langue a tellement tourne de fois avant de parler park the car qu'elle est enroulee en escargot open the windows et bloque ma gorge welcome the breeze mes oreilles ont tellement ecout6 que les tympans se sont renfrognes there par en dedans we crossed real mes yeux ont tellement vu imaginary lines de souffrances et de tragedies ou des visions ahurissantes on over under que mes pupilles rondes into abasourdies se carrefient between pour rationaliser l'epouvante mon iris s'est decompose where two countries end en milles flocons there pour geler mes emotions is a space a borderland

This poemfirst appeared in the poet's book, Line Dancing : Marie Claude Pratte est dipl6mke des Beaux-Arts de An Atlas of Geography Curriculum and Poetric Possi- lfUniversitk Concordia. Depuis une dizaine d'annts ses bilities (NewYork :Peter LangPublishing, 2000). Reprinted tableaux ont ktk prtsentks dans divers lieux de difision, with permission. Wanda Hurren'spoetyhas been published notamment h Quartier kphkm2re at a ['atelier de Guido in various journals. She is an assistant professor in the Molinari en 1998. Facultv of Education at the Universitu of Renina.

CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESILES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME