In this study I analyze how Lower and Upper Canadians in the period 1790-1850 articulated ideas
of the self in relation to concepts provided by the Enlightenment and more particularly by the notion of selflove.
Canadians discussed the importance of individual self-interest in defining the self and in formulating
the ties that would unite a multitude of strangers who were expected to live in peace with one another
regardless of their religious, cultural and social affiliations. Scholarly discussion about the making of
identities in the Canadas has, for the most part, focussed on community-defined identities even though it
has always largely been accepted that the Canadas were 'liberal' and individualistic societies. The writings
of known and educated Canadians show that the making of identities went well beyond community-defined
attributes.
To widen the understanding of the process of identity-making in Canada, I have utilized a wellknown
medieval metaphor that opposes order to contingency or, as in the civic tradition, contrasts virtue
and fortune-corruption. It becomes evident that those who insisted on a community-defined identity that
subsumed the self in the whole had a far different understanding of contingent motifs than those who
insisted on the primacy of the self in the definition of humanity. But both ways of dealing with contingency
continued to influence how Canadians came to understand who they were. No consensus emerged and
by 1850 the discussions of the Canadian self were rich and complex.
The dissertation pays special attention to the methodological implications of utilizing binary
oppositions such as the trope order vs contingency in fashioning the images of peoples and nations in ways
that engage 'post-modern' notions regarding the construction of the identity of the 'Other'.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/6151 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Robert, Louise |
| 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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