This dissertation explores the relationship between the regulatory discourses of
nationalism and sexuality as they operate in the cultural production and textual
dissemination of contemporary Canadian literatures. Applying recent studies in
postcolonial and queer theory to a number of works by gay and lesbian authors
written across a broad spectrum of years, political perspectives, and genres, I seek
to formulate a critical methodology which allows me to situate these works within
the trajectory of Canadian canon-formation from the 1940s to the present. In so
doing, I argue that the historical construction of Canadian literature and Canadian
literary criticism upon an apparent absence of national identity—us encapsulated
most tellingly in the "Where is here?" of Frye's "Conclusion"—masks nothing so
much as the presence of a subversive and destabilizing sexual identity—"queer."
The dissertation is made up of eight chapters: the first opens with a
Sedgwickian survey of the "homosocial" underpinnings of several foundational
texts of Canadian literature, before providing an overview—via George Mosse,
Benedict Anderson, and Michel Foucault—of the theoretical parameters of the
dissertation as a whole. Chapter two focuses on three nationally "ambivalent" and
sexually "dissident" fictions by Timothy Findley. A comparative analysis of the
homophobic criticism accompanying the sexual/textual travels of Patrick
Anderson and Scott Symons serves as the basis of chapter three. Chapter four
discusses the allegorical function of homosexuality in the nationalist theatre of
Michel Tremblay, Rene-Daniel Dubois, and Michel Marc Bouchard. Chapter five
examines how national and sexual borderlines become permeable in the lesbian-feminist
translation poetics of Nicole Brossard and Daphne Marlatt. Issues of
performativity (the repetition and reception of various acts of identification) are
brought to the fore in chapters six and seven, especially as they relate to the
(dis)located politics of Dionne Brand, and the (re)imagined communities of
Tomson Highway and Beth Brant, respectively. Finally, chapter eight revisits
some of the vexed questions of identity raised throughout the dissertation by
moving the discussion of nationalisms and sexualities into the classroom.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/6607 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Dickinson, Peter |
| 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 |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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