This thesis explores contemporary (post-1980) British constructions of Canada or "Canadianness" as these have been conceived through the reading and reception of English-Canadian literary texts in Britain. I am arguing that in recent years Canada has been construed in Britain as an ideal, and furthermore, that this idealization has taken place in response to a perceived cultural and socio-economic malaise within contemporary British society. I use a combined postcolonial and object-relations approach to discuss the psychic investment involved in this construction of Canada as a post-imperial role model. These readers engage with the Canadian object as a sort of phantasy space, projecting onto Canada a self-image which expresses the British desire for postcolonial diversity. Canada thereby enables the dodging of the quagmires of imperiled national identity (and personal subjectivity), for its diffuse and decentralized makeup is balanced by an essentialized notion of cultural and national uniqueness. Throughout I take issue with the ways Canada tends to get celebrated in these writings as a postmodern ideal of unproblematized pluralism and endless diffusion, knowable by the sheer extent to which it seems to defy collective identity. These celebrations of Canada as a new (postmodern) Eden succeed only in emptying the Canadian domain of anything remotely contestatory or political. Indeed, this vision of Canada utilizes a limited version of postmodernism as an idealistic play of pluralities without any sense of accompanying political strife or contradiction.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.35630 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Creators | Sugars, Cynthia Conchita, 1963- |
| Contributors | Finlay-de Monchy, Marike (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of English.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001641305, proquestno: NQ44602, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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