Mapping the contradictions and ambiguities in the cultural politics of Canadian identity, The House of Difference opens up new understandings of the operations of tolerance and Western liberalism in a supposedly post-colonial era. Combining an analysis of the construction of national identity in both past and present-day public culture, with interviews with white Canadians, The House of Difference explores how ideas of racial and cultural difference are articulated in colonial and national projects, and in the subjectivities of people who consider themselves mainstream, or simply Canadian-Canadians.
Author(s): Eva Mackey
Year: 2000
Language: English
Pages: 216
BOOK COVER......Page 1
HALF-TITLE......Page 2
TITLE......Page 4
COPYRIGHT......Page 5
DEDICATION......Page 6
CONTENTS......Page 8
FIGURES......Page 11
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......Page 12
1 INTRODUCTION......Page 15
Theory/identity: the margins and the metropoles......Page 22
Necessary ‘others’: the contradictory inclusions of settler national identity......Page 27
Nationalism as a Western project......Page 30
‘Ordinary people’ and ‘Canadian-Canadians’......Page 32
2 SETTLING DIFFERENCES......Page 37
Allies and others in the colonial encounter......Page 39
Race and settlement......Page 42
Emerging national identity......Page 43
Icy white nationalism......Page 44
Nation-building, immigration and national identity......Page 46
Settling the West: gentle Mounties and picturesque ‘Indians’......Page 48
Assimilation and appropriation......Page 50
Northern wilderness and settler national identity......Page 53
Culture, ‘race’ and nation-building during the war......Page 64
Post-war transformations......Page 66
Prosperity and state intervention......Page 67
Symbols and survival: the flag debate......Page 69
Celebrating the ‘new Canada’......Page 72
Pedagogies of patriotism......Page 73
Making the ‘Indians’ ethnic......Page 74
Creating official ‘multiculturalism’......Page 77
Limiting diversity......Page 79
Rationalising multiculturalism: changes in policy......Page 81
4 BECOMING INDIGENOUS......Page 85
Narrating the nation: official pedagogies of patriotism......Page 87
The land as unifier of diversity......Page 88
The Mountie’s new clothes: reshaping earlier myths......Page 90
Helpmates in progress, guardians of the land......Page 93
Hybridity and Aboriginal self-representation......Page 97
Cultures and projects: a summary......Page 102
White locality and multicultural nationhood......Page 105
Re-enacting the past: erasure and appropriation of Aboriginal people......Page 108
‘What Canada Means to Me’: the flavours and limits of multiculturalism......Page 112
Shifting ground: tolerance turns to ‘rubble’......Page 115
6 CRISIS IN THE HOUSE......Page 121
Constitutions and celebrations......Page 122
Constitutional context and background......Page 124
Designing populist nationalism......Page 128
‘Diagnostics of power’: non-political patriotism and civil society......Page 131
Celebratory ‘taboos’ and naturalising imagery......Page 132
Which ‘people’?......Page 133
Back to the constitution......Page 136
‘The people’ at the Wallaceford Pumpkinfestival......Page 145
Populism and localism......Page 148
Legitimacy and ‘common sense’......Page 152
7 THE ‘BOTTOM LINE’......Page 154
The logic of ‘Canada first’......Page 155
Demonising and admiring the USA......Page 158
‘Canada first’: many cultures, one set of rules......Page 159
Core culture versus ‘other’ cultures: managing, limiting, and tolerating diversity......Page 163
Core culture and Western universal principles......Page 169
Liberal tolerance and power......Page 174
Western projects and cultural hybridity: concluding thoughts......Page 175
NOTES......Page 180
BIBLIOGRAPHY......Page 189
INDEX......Page 204
