H er writings have spawned a debate seeking to reconcile, intellectually and theoretically, the tension between the socially constructed body ( meanings imposed upon the body) and essentialism ( a set of innate physical differences) (Butler 1990 Weir 2000). Postmodern analyses, such as that of Judith Butler, cast doubt on the significance of physicality or the body, particularly in discussions of gender and race.
RACIST SPACE PIONEER LITTLE EUROPE CODE
It is also an expression (or an affect) of power ( Code 2000, 398). It is the affect of conscious and unconscious forces, embodied. I discuss this in greater detail in the introduction to this volume, and note that subjectivity is discursively produced in other words, that it is created through a process. Subjectivity “encompasses conscious and unconscious dimensions of the self, such as one’s sense of who one is in relation to other people” (Henry 2002, 250). Identity was not fixed but historical, and since it is constantly negotiated within societies and cultures it is fluid and changing. Initially, identity was viewed as comprising socially significant criteria such as race, gender, class, and sexuality and how they intersected in particular groups and individuals. Identity, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, became significant in epistemology and a site of contestation. The discourse on race and racism in Canada is multidisciplinary and it has been written by authors of diverse identities. Disputing the authority of the powerful and the dominant to speak on their behalf, the disempowered and the subordinate struggled to give voice to their understanding and thus play a role in constructing knowledge. Questions have been raised about the dominant group, such as males writing about females, whites about blacks, and heterosexuals about gay and lesbian rights. Critics of these accounts have questioned the privileged position of the author vis-à-vis their subject and made explicit the power relations embedded in such scholarships. The “truth” about the Other documented in such writings has at the present time generally been thought of as biased, ethnocentric, or plain racist. Such scholarship has been alleged to treat the colonized, subordinate, disempowered culture, group, or society as objects of study and not as participating and engaged subjects. White scholarship on colonized subjects has been criticized as biased and for constructing their culture and society in the image of white Europeans or as Edward Said notes, the “Other” (1978). We have a generation of young scholars now so it’ll continue to grow” (Interview November 2004). Canadian scholarship on racism is not of the caliber of the writings of Stuart Hall or some important American writings such as those of Paul Gilroy, Patricia Williams, or even Cornell West. Frances Henry argues that this literature “has grown enormously but that doesn’t mean it is sufficient. Similarly, the history and politics of racialized women have been documented and a substantial body of literature now exists.
Racism as a subject has also been accorded status and respect in most disciplines and there are many studies that either discuss its meaning, history, and significance or use the race lens to analyze public policies, as for example, immigration, national and border security, and refugees (Li 2004 Aiken 2001, forthcoming Macklin 2001). In the last decade, a body of literature, written from diverse disciplinary perspectives, has emerged that analyzes the experience of racialized groups such as the Aboriginals, Chinese, South Asians, and blacks. Historically, the imagined Canada was constructed as a white nation (Hoerder 1999). Racism lies in the absence or marginalization of racialized populations in accounts of Canadian history and society, the use of white Canadians as the norm to which others are explicitly or otherwise compared, the denigration of their “ homes” and heritages, and the individual or collective exclusion of racialized peoples through inhospitable attitudes.
This, at best, is xenophobic it is also racist” (Brand 1991, 11).
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/800px-Launch_of_Pioneer_10-2-58b831393df78c060e653127.jpg "racist space pioneer little europe")
In 1991 Dionne Brand in No Burden to Carry expressed the sentiments of many racialized academics when she wrote that “Canadian scholarship overall has been preoccupied with English and French concerns, to the exclusion of Canadian people of non-European origin.
RACIST SPACE PIONEER LITTLE EUROPE PDF
Returning To The Source: The Final Stage of the Caribbean Migration Circuitįorthcoming in: Interrogating Race and Racism edited by Vijay Agnew, University of Toronto Press.Ĭlick here to view the interview in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.īeing White and Thinking Black: A n Interview with Frances Henry.He Had the Power: Pa Neezer, the Orisha King of Trinidad.Racial Profiling In Canada: Challenging The Myth Of A Few Bad Apples.The Equity Myth: Racialization and Indigeneity at Canadian UniversitiesĬolour Of Democracy: Racism In Canadian Society.
0 kommentar(er)
