Speculative fiction is a genre that is gaining urgency in the contemporary Canadian literary scene as authors and readers become increasingly concerned with what it means to live in a nation implicated in globalization. This genre is useful because with it, authors can extrapolate from the present to explore what some of the long-term effects of globalization might be. This thesis specifically considers the long-term effects of globalization on communities, a theme that speculative fictions return to frequently. The selected speculative fictions engage with current theory on globalization and community in their explorations of how globalization might affect the types of communities that can be enacted. This thesis argues that these texts demonstrate how Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s notion of “cooperative autonomy” can be uniquely cultivated in the conditions of globalization – despite the fact that those conditions are characterized by the fragmentation of traditional forms of community (Empire 392).

Quebec knew a long tradition of regionalistic literature since the novel of the soil, tradition with which the writers of Quebec broke for a long time. However, certain writers still practice a regionalistic form of literature, which does not have anything to see with the novel of the soil. Within the literary institution, the regionalistic writers of today seem to belong to a sphere of distinct production. In order to delimit the space occupied by the contemporary regionalistic writers, we based ourselves on the theory of the literary field of Pierre Bourdieu and the theory of the institution of the literature of Jacques Dubois. So as to apply the model of Bourdieu and Dubois to a typical example of contemporary regionalistic writer, we chose to concentrate us on the career of Sylvain Riviere, Gaspesian writer born in 1955. Sylvain Riviere seems to be the regionalistic writer par excellence, who devoted the most part of his work to his region, Gaspesia and the Magdalen Islands. The example of Sylvain Riviere shows us that in spite of his marginality, the regionalistic writer is able to find his place inside the contemporary literary field.

Leonie Kramer has noted that 'literary commentary . . . is a powerful influence on notions of what constitutes a particular reality.' But literary commentary does not act alone: it also intersects with other discursive acts that together produce a dominant ideology, participating with them in the construction of 'a particular reality'. This thesis demonstrates, for the period since 1940, how arguments about the nature of Canadian and Australian Literatures in English are part of that ideological process. It therefore interrogates the kinds of 'national interests' which the discussions of the national literatures serve. Acknowledging that such debates are conducted as being 'in the interest' of the nation but are in fact in the domain of particular institutions, it enquires into the sources and relations of power within those institutions (and other cultural formations), and the ways in which that power is enhanced by the discussions of the national literatures. While it is true that the question, 'Is there any?' continued to be used as a dismissive topos in some polemics well into the period covered, this thesis argues that in the significant debates about Australian and Canadian Literatures, and in most of the public use of them, the issues that are engaged are rather 'What is it?' and, implicitly at least, 'What may be done with/to it?' That last question discloses that the debate is about authority. The thesis argues that the attempts to define national literatures have been attempts to privilege the position of the definer. It proposes that the visibility of national literatures, the general acknowledgement of their 'presence', depends not on the adventitious .pn iv production of particular literary works -- the epic, a 'masterpiece', the Great Canadian/Australian Novel -- or on the 'mastery' of particular literary material -- the vernacular, indigenous peoples, the natural environment -- but rather on the establishment of the institutions of literary culture. It further argues that, despite the considerable achievements of individuals, this is not a history of individual heroism any more than it is a matter of reaching a quota of quality, quantity, or content. The 'actions' of those notable individuals are subject to, and are often precipitated by, institutional, political, and economic forces such as those examined in Chapters Five and Six. One premise of this thesis is that in Post-Colonial cultures, the 'presence' of history, ideology, and discourse is especially 'marked', and that, for an understanding of the development of literary culture, an examination of the economies of public/ation, of the relation to public policy, is not only necessary but inevitable. The proof of the existence of a national literature is, indeed, the existence of its infrastructure -- the institutions of writing, teaching, scholarship, and publishing. But a crucial cause seems to be the precipitation of a polemic -- a 'timely' debate about the literature. Equally, the maintenance of a cultural nationalism depends not on the 'existence' of a national culture but upon the promotion of a problematic -- a rhetoric of crisis. In this, Canada has been more prominent than Australia. It is worth noting that the 'crisis' in Canadian culture in the nineteen seventies was especially closely tied to the focussing upon the national in 1967 (the Centennial), upon internal threats to its survival (the 'Quebec crisis'), and the external threats to its survival (American economic domination of Canadian industry and consequently of Canadian culture): the debate about Canadian culture was a metaphor and a metonymy for each of these. While it has become axiomatic to observe that Canadian society is pluralist (the mosaic) and Australian society is assimilationist (the monolith), this thesis nevertheless shows that the coherence of Canadian society is in many ways more apparent. This is especially true of the cultural articulations of that society, its concern for principles (rather than Australian pragmatism), its impetus towards defining issues (rather than the Australian dealing with problems), and its concern with self- knowledge. However, in working comparatively with Canadian and Australian literatures this thesis departs from the customary Australian-Canadian strategy of distinguishing between the two literatures with the implied object of judging the two cultures. Its aim, rather, is to pursue an understanding of the development and workings of national literary cultures. It therefore considers not only the particular histories of literary criticism and literary history, and those of the various cultural institutions, but also endeavours to analyse their sociologies as well. The effects, then, of the particular modes of operation of the institutions (and even individuals) in Canadian and Australian literary culture upon the representation and recognition of those 'Literatures' are considered in some detail in the process of examining the range of social and cultural domains that must be analysed if the stories of national literary cultures are to be made intelligible.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Michigan, 1936. / Thesis note on label mounted on t.p. The original dissertation, in English, has title: The regional literature of French Canada. "Bibliographie": p. [255]-270.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Alberta, 2009. / Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on Oct. 20, 2009). "A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in French Language, Literatures and Linguistics, Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies. University of Alberta, Fall 2009." Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Michigan, 1936. / Thesis note on label mounted on t.p. The original dissertation, in English, has title: The regional literature of French Canada. "Bibliographie": p. [255]-270.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2008. Graduate Programme in English. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 218-234). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:NR51491

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2005. / Advisor: R. Hyman. Includes bibliographical references (p. 241-245). Also available via World Wide Web.

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