This thesis interrogates how Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes represents histories of violence ethically by utilizing Emmanuel Lévinas’s philosophy of ethics as a methodology for interpretation. Traditional slave narratives like Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography and postmodern neo-slave narratives like Toni Morrison’s Beloved animate the violence endemic to slavery and colonialism in an effort to emphasize struggles in conscience, the incomprehensible atrocities, and strategies of rebellion. However, this project illustrates how The Book of Negroes supplements these literary goals with Hill’s own imagination of how slaves contested the inhumanities thrust upon them. Through his aesthetic choices as a realist, Hill foregrounds the possibilities of pacifism, singular identities, and altruistic agency through his protagonist Aminata Diallo. These three narrative elements constitute Lévinas’s ethical peace, which means displaying a profound sensitivity towards the historical Other whom imperial discourses and traditional representations of catastrophes in Black history might obscure. / Graduate / 0325 / 0328 / 0352 / jaslife12@hotmail.com

This study explores the literary representations of the post-colonial margin, and develops this site as a place of possibility to transform self identity and acquire power. This exploration of Caribbean-Canadian literature, from writers born in the Caribbean who emigrated to Canada indicates the potential for power in the margins without idealizing this space. / Close readings of fiction by Neil Bissoondath, Dionne Brand and Marlene Nourbese Philip illustrate various struggles within the margin based on race, gender, economics, and education. Despite vast ideological differences regarding identity, all three authors concur in their characterizations of the margin. In each work, the margin is not a monolithic entity, but rather a diverse space which allows for the constitution of various identities. / This textual analysis in conjunction with critical analysis also addresses issues of language appropriation and cultural ghettoization, by critiquing the right of one group to speak for another in a racially mixed society such as Canada, as well as by critiquing the homogeneity of identity within one racial group. Ultimately, by illuminating these textual and critical trends, this study looks toward possible future directions for Caribbean-Canadian literature.

Texts like the World examines Nicole Brossards Picture Theory and Mauve Desert and Dionne Brands No Language is Neutral and A Map to the Door of No Return in order to demonstrate how these authors figure place in ways that are representative of utopian discourse. To do so, I draw primarily on two disciplinary perspectives: cultural geography and utopian studies. I turn to postmodern cultural geography, in particular to the work of Doreen Massey but also to works by Canadian cultural geographers Derek Gregory and Jane Jacobs, in order to examine Brossards and Brands understanding of space, time, and place. In general, postmodern cultural geographers argue that such conceptions of a socially-constructed, multiple, non-totalizable, dynamic space-time cannot be represented, or they call for some as-yet-unknown way to represent it. I turn to utopian studies to demonstrate how these authors deploy utopian discourse in order to figure such a geographical imagination. Rather than to studies of utopia as a literary genre, I draw on theories that posit utopia as a discourse in various dialectical relationships with ideology. In particular, I draw on the work of Fredric Jameson who argues that utopian discourse arises in the transitional moments between two modes of production. Through its unintentional narrative discontinuities and continual play and production, utopia figures the experience of existing within the moments inevitable contradictions, including contradictory constructions of place. Expanding on Jameson, I modify his theory of utopian discourse so that it figures the contradictions arising spatially as well as temporally. In other words, the contradictions of utopian discourse can be intentionally employed to figure the experience of existing among and within multiple co-exiting constructions of space, time, and place. Jameson argues that utopian discourse figures a world that cannot be known abstractly, and in Brands and Brossards texts, such a world is postmodern cultural geographys space-time dynamic that counters hegemonic constructions of space, time, and place. / English

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2006. / Supervisor: Daniel Coleman.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 287-299).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of British Columbia. / Typescript. Examines "several important literary works of the Newfoundland diaspora, including the poetry of E.J. Pratt and Carl Leggo, the drama of David French, the fiction of Donna Morrissey and Wayne Johnston, and the memoirs of Helen M. Buss/ Margaret Clarke and David Macfarlane." (p. ii). Includes bibliographical references (p. 252-265). Also available online.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2004. / Advisor: D. L. Coleman. Also available via World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.A.)--York University, 2004. Graduate Programme in English. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [127-129]. Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url%5Fver=Z39.88-2004&res%5Fdat=xri:pqdiss&rft%5Fval%5Ffmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft%5Fdat=xri:pqdiss:MQ99283

Thesis (M.A.)--York University, 2005. Graduate Programme in Communication and Culture. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91-96). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url%5Fver=Z39.88-2004&res%5Fdat=xri:pqdiss &rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:MR11783

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