While Canada's increasing ethnic and racial diversity have received a great deal of attention in recent years, the pluralization of its religious makeup has been largely ignored. As a result, political and societal responses to religious diversity have been mixed. This study highlights one response to religious difference at the community level. Using qualitative research methods I highlight the ways in which Interfaith Grand River, a group of religiously diverse individuals in Kitchener-Waterloo Ontario, "build bridges" between local religious groups and the larger K-W community. I use the theories of Charles Taylor and Jurgen Habermas, among others, to locate IGR's dialogue-centred approach within larger discussions about the importance of recognizing religion and religious difference in the public sphere. I argue that interfaith practices are a "dissonant child" of multicultural policies, sharing an emphasis on inclusion while critiquing multiculturalism' blindness to religious issues. From this, I argue that faith-based diversity needs to be addressed not only in national policies, but also in communities through individual relationship building and dialogue.

While Canada's increasing ethnic and racial diversity have received a great deal of attention in recent years, the pluralization of its religious makeup has been largely ignored. As a result, political and societal responses to religious diversity have been mixed. This study highlights one response to religious difference at the community level. Using qualitative research methods I highlight the ways in which Interfaith Grand River, a group of religiously diverse individuals in Kitchener-Waterloo Ontario, "build bridges" between local religious groups and the larger K-W community. I use the theories of Charles Taylor and Jurgen Habermas, among others, to locate IGR's dialogue-centred approach within larger discussions about the importance of recognizing religion and religious difference in the public sphere. I argue that interfaith practices are a "dissonant child" of multicultural policies, sharing an emphasis on inclusion while critiquing multiculturalism' blindness to religious issues. From this, I argue that faith-based diversity needs to be addressed not only in national policies, but also in communities through individual relationship building and dialogue.

Thesis (M.A.). / Title from title page of PDF (viewed 2008/01/30). Written for the Dept. of Art History and Communication Studies. Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation examines current academic approaches to reading South Asian-Canadian literature as a multicultural “other” to Canadian national literature and proposes an alternative reading strategy that allows for these texts to be read within a framework of South Asian diasporic subjectivities situated specifically at the Canadian location. Shifting from the idea that “Canada” names a particular national identity and national literary culture to the idea that “Canada” names a particular geographic terrain at which different cultural, social, and historical vectors intersect and are creolized allows for a more nuanced reading of South Asian-Canadian literature, both in terms of its relationship to the complex history of the South Asian diaspora and in terms of the complex history of South Asian encounters with the Canadian space. Reading prose, poetry, drama, and theatrical institutions as locations where a specifically South Asian-Canadian diasporic subjectivity is reflected, I am able to map a range of individual negotiations among the cultural vector of the “ancestral” past, the cultural vector of the influence of European colonialism, and the cultural vector of this place that demonstrate that the negotiation of South Asian-Canadian diasporic subjectivity and its reflection in literature cannot be understood as producing a homogenous or “authentic” cultural identity. Instead, the literary expression of South Asian-Canadian diasporic subjectivity argues that the outcome of negotiations between cultural vectors that take place in this location are as unique as the individuals who undertake those negotiations. These individual negotiations, I argue, need to be read collectively to trace out a continuum of possible expressions of South Asian-Canadian diasporic subjectivity, a continuum that emphasizes that the processes of negotiation are on-going and flexible. This dissertation challenges the assumption that Canadian literature can be contained within the limits of a Canadian nationalist mythology or ethnography. Instead of the literature of the Canadian “nation” or the Canadian “people,” Canadian literature is best understood as the literature produced in this location by all the “minority” populations, including the dominant “minority.” Reading Canadian literature, then, is reading the differential relationships to history and community that occur in this place and which are inscribed in these collectively Canadian texts.

My reading of the figure of Adele, a woman with dementia, in David Chariandy’s novel Soucouyant: A Novel of Forgetting (2007), brings Giorgio Agamben’s biopolitical concept of “bare life” together with the notion of the subject in diaspora to theorize a new mentality that I call “bare mind.” The notion of “bare mind” addresses how cognitive imperialism creates a biopolitical state of exception both under forms of sovereign power and within a liberal regime of multicultural governmentality, while acknowledging the ways in which dementia, portrayed as the ‘forgetting’ of dominant knowledge regimes, reveals resistance to cognitive imperialism. / Graduate / 0352 / rebekah.ludolph@gmail.com

This dissertation examines current academic approaches to reading South Asian-Canadian literature as a multicultural “other” to Canadian national literature and proposes an alternative reading strategy that allows for these texts to be read within a framework of South Asian diasporic subjectivities situated specifically at the Canadian location. Shifting from the idea that “Canada” names a particular national identity and national literary culture to the idea that “Canada” names a particular geographic terrain at which different cultural, social, and historical vectors intersect and are creolized allows for a more nuanced reading of South Asian-Canadian literature, both in terms of its relationship to the complex history of the South Asian diaspora and in terms of the complex history of South Asian encounters with the Canadian space. Reading prose, poetry, drama, and theatrical institutions as locations where a specifically South Asian-Canadian diasporic subjectivity is reflected, I am able to map a range of individual negotiations among the cultural vector of the “ancestral” past, the cultural vector of the influence of European colonialism, and the cultural vector of this place that demonstrate that the negotiation of South Asian-Canadian diasporic subjectivity and its reflection in literature cannot be understood as producing a homogenous or “authentic” cultural identity. Instead, the literary expression of South Asian-Canadian diasporic subjectivity argues that the outcome of negotiations between cultural vectors that take place in this location are as unique as the individuals who undertake those negotiations. These individual negotiations, I argue, need to be read collectively to trace out a continuum of possible expressions of South Asian-Canadian diasporic subjectivity, a continuum that emphasizes that the processes of negotiation are on-going and flexible. This dissertation challenges the assumption that Canadian literature can be contained within the limits of a Canadian nationalist mythology or ethnography. Instead of the literature of the Canadian “nation” or the Canadian “people,” Canadian literature is best understood as the literature produced in this location by all the “minority” populations, including the dominant “minority.” Reading Canadian literature, then, is reading the differential relationships to history and community that occur in this place and which are inscribed in these collectively Canadian texts.

Canadian multiculturalism policy is often said to have come about in 1971 because of factors such as the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, the multicultural movement of the 1960s, or the more liberal political and social climate of the postwar period. While all of these played roles in the emergence of “multiculturalism within a bilingual framework,” this dissertation takes the approach that the federal civil service was the most important factor behind the adoption of a federal multiculturalism policy in Canada. The author makes the case that the Canadian state had adopted multiculturalism policy and programs as early as the 1950s. A small branch of Government, known as the Canadian Citizenship Branch sought to integrate members of ethnic minority communities into the mainstream of Canadian life, but also sought to reassure native-born Canadians that these “New Canadians” had vital contributions to make to Canadian culture. This dissertation shows how this state discourse intersected with the more familiar elements associated with the rise of multiculturalism, such as the multicultural movement, and ultimately coalesced in 1971 with the announcement by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau of a “new” state multiculturalism policy. / Graduate / 0334 / blanding@uvic.ca

Canadian multiculturalism policy is often said to have come about in 1971 because of factors such as the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, the multicultural movement of the 1960s, or the more liberal political and social climate of the postwar period. While all of these played roles in the emergence of “multiculturalism within a bilingual framework,” this dissertation takes the approach that the federal civil service was the most important factor behind the adoption of a federal multiculturalism policy in Canada. The author makes the case that the Canadian state had adopted multiculturalism policy and programs as early as the 1950s. A small branch of Government, known as the Canadian Citizenship Branch sought to integrate members of ethnic minority communities into the mainstream of Canadian life, but also sought to reassure native-born Canadians that these “New Canadians” had vital contributions to make to Canadian culture. This dissertation shows how this state discourse intersected with the more familiar elements associated with the rise of multiculturalism, such as the multicultural movement, and ultimately coalesced in 1971 with the announcement by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau of a “new” state multiculturalism policy. / Graduate / 0334 / blanding@uvic.ca

I evaluate Will Kymlicka’s theory of multiculturalism in Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, and how it accounts for Indigenous nations in Canada. I ask whether any failures of multiculturalism can be attributed to either the normative or descriptive claims of his theory. I find points of failure in both claims, depending on the theme in question. Chapter 1 introduces the project and outlines subsequent chapters. Chapter 2 presents an account of Kymlicka’s multiculturalism (including why I chose Kymlicka’s framework as my focus) and the guiding questions of the thesis. Chapter 3 presents major legislation, policy, and jurisprudence in Canada concerning Indigenous nations and multiculturalism in practice. Chapter 4 examines four major claims or themes found in Chapter 2 against the material in Chapter 3: citizenship in Indigenous nations; the characterization of treaties; exercising group-differentiated rights, and; the Canadian state’s exercise of authority over Indigenous nations.