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Organized socialism was conceived and born in Canada during the last decade of the nineteenth century; however the forces which led to this conception can be traced back into the late 1860's. From this time, it is possible to race a fairly intelligible line to the first socialist organizations of the 1890's. [...]

In this study I analyze how Lower and Upper Canadians in the period 1790-1850 articulated ideas of the self in relation to concepts provided by the Enlightenment and more particularly by the notion of selflove. Canadians discussed the importance of individual self-interest in defining the self and in formulating the ties that would unite a multitude of strangers who were expected to live in peace with one another regardless of their religious, cultural and social affiliations. Scholarly discussion about the making of identities in the Canadas has, for the most part, focussed on community-defined identities even though it has always largely been accepted that the Canadas were 'liberal' and individualistic societies. The writings of known and educated Canadians show that the making of identities went well beyond community-defined attributes. To widen the understanding of the process of identity-making in Canada, I have utilized a wellknown medieval metaphor that opposes order to contingency or, as in the civic tradition, contrasts virtue and fortune-corruption. It becomes evident that those who insisted on a community-defined identity that subsumed the self in the whole had a far different understanding of contingent motifs than those who insisted on the primacy of the self in the definition of humanity. But both ways of dealing with contingency continued to influence how Canadians came to understand who they were. No consensus emerged and by 1850 the discussions of the Canadian self were rich and complex. The dissertation pays special attention to the methodological implications of utilizing binary oppositions such as the trope order vs contingency in fashioning the images of peoples and nations in ways that engage 'post-modern' notions regarding the construction of the identity of the 'Other'.

Describing historical accounts of Canadian Nikkei1 experience, historian Midge (Michiko) Ayukawa (1996) writes that these accounts represent "history in the passive voice, and that it is necessary to retell it with the eyes and ears of the people who were directly involved" (3). For Nikkei women, "history in the passive voice" has either completely overlooked their experiences or narrowly defined their social role in terms of domesticity and submission to a patriarchal authority. The dominant image of the Japanese Canadian woman has been that of the "good wife, wise mother" (Ayukawa 1995). This ideal image of womanhood emerged as a component in the dramatic processes of social reform in Meiji Japan (1868-1912). Both Caucasian and Nikkei historians have sustained the power of this mythical image by characterizing those experiences that exceed its conceptual boundaries as merely idiosyncratic. Simultaneously, however, Nikkei women have been weaving narratives of their history which both duplicate and subvert this image of quiet domesticity. This study contrasts processes of identity formation in twentieth-century writing by and about Canadian Nikkei women. I approach these narratives by first analyzing the categories of race, class, ethnicity, culture, and gender that historians, anthropologists, literary theorists, and theorists of ethnicity have constructed in order to interpret and contain them. I then examine how the narratives engage with three dominant discourses of being, namely those concerned with food, sexuality, and the transmission of culture. For several reasons, I treat this body of writing from an interdisciplinary and multi-theoretical perspective. My sources include published and unpublished texts from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, history, literature, and geography. These texts embrace a wide range of genres, among them fiction, poetry, autobiography, the essay, the journal, the letter, so-called conventional scholarship, and responses to an ethnograhic questionnaire that I have collected. The texts are also informed by both Japanese and "western"2 cultural ideas and practices, and sometimes by several additional cultural influences. Their writers create a complex interrelation of textual identities which invites a range of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. Thus I examine the texts by engaging with a number of theories, including deconstructive postmodernism, deconstructive feminism, feminist anthropology, feminist history, and close textual analysis. I base this study on the theoretical premise that to treat narratives of experience rigorously, the researcher must regard the texts as both objects of study and authoritative critical voices (Cole and Phillips 1995; Chow 1993; Trinh 1989; Clifford and Marcus 1986). Therefore, I look to writing by Nikkei women for its reflections on Nikkei women's experiences, but also for guidance in interpreting the texts under study. As well, I read these texts for their critical comment on the conceptual categories that conventional scholarship has used to manage the unruliness and ambiguity of Nikkei women's narratives and experience. By welcoming the categorically disruptive, my analysis offers a theoretical perspective that may help to ensure a creative interrelation of theory and praxis. [Footnotes] 1 "Nikkei" are individuals of Japanese descent living outside of Japan. 2 Some researchers favour the upper case "Western" to describe North American and European theoretical traditions across disciplines (Mennell 1985). I include in the category of "western" all those ideas that become a body of thought as they are used to distinguish them from "eastern" or "oriental." With the success of European and American imperialist projects from the nineteenth century to the present, this "setting-off against the Orient," as Said calls it (Orientalism 3), exceeds national boundaries. One can say, then, that there are critics of Japanese ancestry, residing in Japan and elsewhere, who write from a western point of view. Thus, I depend on the lower-case "western," to emphasize the constructed nature of western ideology, as opposed to the stricter geographical or political connotations suggested by the proper noun.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, many artists, writers, and dramatists joined the Communist Party of Canada and its cultural wing, the Progressive Arts Club. They produced plays, and contributed articles, poems and stories to socialist magazines, such as Masses and New Frontier. As the depression deepened and radical politics became less sectarian, women played a more prominent role in the cultural realm of radical politics. Their increased participation changed the way women were represented in art and literature; women's roles became less stereotypical, and women artists and writers combined both socialist and feminist concerns in their work. The journal New Frontier, founded by Jean "Jim" Watts and edited by two women and two men, provides numerous examples of socialist-feminist writing. Dorothy Livesay, one of the editors and a member of the Communist Party from 1932 to 1937, deserves special attention for her contribution to Canadian literature of social protest.

The Knights of Labor had their beginning in the United States in 1869. KNown originally as the “Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor”,they were at first a secret body. This secret nature was due in part at least, to the founder of the Order, Uriah Smith Stephens, who, being himself a Freemason, naturally tended towards secrecy. Mr. Stephens argued: “I don’t know of any great good that has been accomplished except through the agency of secret societies. I believe that all legitimate occupations have their secrets. Ministers and medical men have their associations, merchants their exchanges, lawyers their bar associations, and so on, and they all have their secrets, and I see no reason why those upon whom the commerce of the world rests should not have theirs.”1 Closely associated with this secrecy, was the ritual of the Order. When a candidate was invited to join the Order, he attended a secret meeting where he was first asked three questions: ‘Do you believe in God, the creator and Father of all? Do you obey the Universal Ordinance of God, in gaining your bread by the sweat of your brow? Are you willing to take a sollemn vow binding you to secrecy, obedience and mutual assistance?’ [...]