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Insofar as the postcolonial project is one of the elaboration of “the plurality of modernity, and the agency multiplying its forms”, my project is a contribution to this larger one in the form of a postcolonial theory of multiculturalism (Ashcroft, 2009, p. 85). Drawing from minority standpoints, arguments, and narratives, I focus on the lives and perspectives of a few broad groups in particular: indigenous peoples in Canada, Muslim women, and East Asian “immigrant” minorities. I take up a critical theory approach to framing multicultural theory and the questions it asks from the standpoints of minorities themselves, foregrounding the challenges and perspectives of racialized groups for whom their ethno-culture is morally salient and central to their own understanding of their identities and aims. This framework draws on the insights of feminist theorists of deliberative democracy but also departs from them in the crucial respect of affirming a conception of culture and identity that accepts some basic “communitarian” ideas of morality and culture, while conceiving these within a postcolonial project of cultural reclamation rather than a republican framework of the public sphere. My project is organized into two parts: The first section systematically critiques the dominant liberal multiculturalist model based on Canadian multicultural policy and theorized by Kymlicka, which is oriented by the liberal state’s perspective in its aims of integrating minorities. In the first chapter, I reject his universalist principle of liberal neutrality as the standard for justice in favour of a pluralist democratic standard that accommodates “thin” theories of the good. In the second and third chapters, I reformulate Kymlicka’s categories of “national minorities” and “polyethnic minorities” respectively in order to take account of postcolonial indigenous sovereignty and the transnational scope of ethnic identity. The second section develops a pluralist account of agency in its descriptive (Chapter 4), normative (Chapter 5), and prescriptive (Chapter 6) aspects (Deveaux 2006 p. 179). This is developed as a constructive critique of liberal standards of autonomy, particularly feminist proposals for a standard of procedural autonomy, as unable to adequately describe and assess heteronomous agency.

'Post-colonial Dislocation and Amnesia: A Cure from Molefi Kete Asante's An Afrocentric Manifesto' aims at investigating the epistemological problems and theoretical inconsistencies in contemporary post-colonial studies. Capitalizing Molefi Kete Asante's theorizations on agency, location, identity, and history this project applies an Afrocentric approach in its reading of the post-colonial authors and theorists. While current postcolonial theory seems to be at stake with operationalizing many of its terms and concepts, the application of Afrocentric methods can help answering severe allegations raised by a number of critics against this discourse. Issues concerning spatial and temporal location of the term post-colonial, commodity status of post-colonialism, and crises in the post-colonial pedagogy can be addressed from an Afrocentric perspective based on a new historiography. To support the proposed arguments, the paper provides an extensive reading of two post-colonial writers from the Caribbean, and shows how they manipulate their apparent power in perpetuating the misrepresentations of the colonized people initiated by the colonial discourses. With a detailed discussion of the principles of Afrocentricity based on Asante's ground-breaking book An Afrocentric Manifesto, the paper proposes possible ways in which Afrocentric theory could be applied in addressing such misrepresentations and developing a true sense of identity for the oppressed people. / African American Studies

Intricate Fictions: Cartography and the Contemporary African Novel examines the relationship between narrative and mapping practices in recent African novels. Considering the continent's well-documented history as a site of cartographical projection, I ask how its literary output remaps this space in the years following colonial rule. This project responds to calls for increased attentiveness to space in African literature, employing an interdisciplinary methodology that puts critical cartography into conversation with African literary criticism and globalization studies. I trace a trajectory from post-independence novels writing against colonial depictions of the continent to contemporary novels interested in engaging the instability concomitant with globalization and its attendant diasporas, migrations, and challenges to epistemological categories such as the nation. These novels develop what I term dynamic cartography, a mode of space-writing characterized by fluidity, disjunction, and mobility. This study brings to the fore a corpus of works that embody the spatial tensions of the contemporary era, raising provocative questions about our metageographical and cartographical tendencies. As absolute frameworks of time and space give way, new modes of space-writing continue to blur the boundaries between the map and the novel, offering further avenues of analysis. Ultimately, I pursue these avenues in order to contend that as global space becomes increasingly dynamic, so too do the genres that represent that global space. Contemporary African novels, composed with a profound awareness of geographical transformation, are thus also positioned at the forefront of generic transformation. / English

“Africological Reconceptualization of the Epistemological Crises in Postcolonial Studies” aims at investigating the epistemological problems and theoretical inconsistencies in contemporary post-colonial studies. Capitalizing the Afrocentric theories of location, agency, and identity developed by Molefi Kete Asante and Ama Mazama, this research takes Afrocentricity beyond the Africological analysis of African phenomenon and demonstrates its applicability in resolving issues that concern human liberation irrespective of race, class, gender, and nationality. To do so, this project juxtaposes the theories of Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, and Gayatri Spivak with the Afrocentric theories of Molefi Asante and Ama Mazama, and demonstrates that the application of Afrocentric methods can help answering severe allegations against postcolonialism raised by a number of critics from within the school itself. Issues concerning spatial and temporal location of the term post-colonial, commodity status of post-colonialism, and crises in the post-colonial pedagogy can be addressed from an Afrocentric perspective based on a new historiography. To support the proposed arguments, the paper provides an Afrocentric analysis of some postcolonial works and shows how the very radical stance of postcoloniality has been neutralized by the Western academy. Simultaneously, the research also shows, despite being ridiculously disparaged as essentialist and racist, Afrocentricity is fundamentally radical and quintessentially emancipatory in its relentless fight against misrepresentation, pseudoscience, and injustice in the name of objective scholarship perpetrated by Eurocentric intellectuals—particularly from Asia and Africa. / African American Studies

This thesis, consisting of four chapters, examines the shifting identities in contemporary québécois migrant literature, as well as the way the Other is represented by the authors in our study. The first chapter is devoted to the methodology and the theoretical framework for our research, which, in terms of postcolonial critique, is based on Homi Bhabha’s concept of « third space » as a creative literary space and fertile ground for the exploration of identity. Our study also explores concepts pertaining to specific traits of migrant literature, such as oral tradition, irony and humour, and transcultural identity, from theorists such as Janet Paterson, Linda Hutcheon and Lise Gauvin. The second chapter focuses on the writing of Marie-Célie Agnant and Abla Farhoud, both of whom use the notions of home and of oral tradition to gather the generations and to establish family histories. These two authors portray the image of a grandmother, exiled in Québec, and represent these women as the backbone of their respective families. The third chapter takes a very different approach to the question of Otherness, examining the use of irony and humour as tools for social critique in the work of Dany Laferrière and Pan Bouyoucas, two authors who use humour to mask the serious nature of their subject matter. Their critique of modern society is developed by exploiting the concept of «Otherness». The fourth and final chapter is dedicated to a more contemporary expression of the experience of migration, as portrayed in the work of Kim Thúy and Ying Chen, whose writing signals a significant departure from the themes of the earliest literature classified as « migrant », in the sense that they both adopt a neutrality of tone and create a literary production mostly absent of spatiotemporal reference. For Thúy and ! vi Chen, writing represents an apprenticeship of the French language and of cultural integration. Today’s Québécois migrant literature questions the pluralisation of identities, as well as the concepts of individual identity and collective identity. As such, the developing pluralistic nature of Québécois society is better represented within its literary scene. Within the framework of our study, what interests us the most is the changing face of the migrant identity over the course of the past fifty years, as well as the trajectory of its representation in this body of literature. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis examines the evolution in the representation of migrant identity and the experience of migration at the heart of contemporary Québécois literature. This research questions the pragmatic aspect of literature, specifically the establishment of new identities in twentieth and twenty-first century Québec and Canada. Our corpus explores the literary representation of life on the margins of a host society. By applying the postcolonial research on Otherness and Identity of theorists such as Homi Bhabha, Lise Gauvin and Janet Paterson, we are able to analyse the distinct characteristics of the literary production on memory and history, and on displacement, that originate from what Bhabha calls the gap between cultures.

One of the areas in which social workers can operate in is different forms of treatment, investigation and prevention work with youth that live in particularly vulnerable and urban areas. Areas in which the average income is lower in comparison to other areas, and areas that tend to be predominantly inhabited by ethnic minorities. These areas are particularly prone to gang crime and community violence. Thus affecting the overall safety of its inhabitants, in particular the youth population living there. The purpose of the present work is to investigate the connections that research has drawn attention to between community violence in particularly vulnerable areas and trauma reactions/signs of trauma among the young people who live in these areas by using the methodological approach of a literature study. The study seeks to understand found connections using psychological resilience theory and postcolonial theory. Findings of this study shows that as a result of living in areas particularly prone to community violence, a large proportion of youth are exposed to higher levels of community violence in various forms. Said exposure is also connected to certain symptoms of trauma, as well as other types of psychological distress. The results are connected to structural factors of a postcolonial society in which certain groups of people have no choice but to remain in the harmful area that they reside in. Resilience is valued, approached and defined differently in the studies that have been used in this work, but the overall result shows that it is a significant protective factor for youth that are exposed to community violence.

This study is dedicated to examine the concept of borders, geographical and otherwise, as instruments that are socially produced. It utilizes Gloria Anzaldua's theoretical framework of Borderlands theory as a set of processes that seek to attain the de-colonization of the inner self. The historical and spatial dynamics of the geographical border between Mexico and United States, largely shaped by the U.S. expansionist agenda, resulted in the Mexican lost of more than half of its territory and the subsequent stigmatization of Mexican-Americans/Chicanos as "foreign others," since they did not share with predominant Anglo-Saxons the same values, culture, religion, traditions and skin color. I argue that the later exploitation, exclusion, marginalization, and racism against Mexican-Americans/Chicanos informed Anzaldua's development of her Borderlands theory that seeks to attain liberation for any colonized identity. However, it is also my argument that the borderlands theory fails to account for meaningful political freedom since the processes that compose the theory are principally worked at the inner level, restricting the possibilities for a direct confrontation in the public sphere. / Master of Arts