Weaving a Canadian Allegory: Anonymous Writing, Personal Reading

153 Pages·1994·8.34 MB·English

by  Loretta Czernis

Weaving a Canadian Allegory
Anonymous Writing,
Personal Reading
Loretta Czernis
For centuries kings, political theorists, generals and cardinals
thought of nations and institutions as social and corporate
bodies. In this age of biotechnology, bodies are imagined as
commodities that can be fixed. But the kind of mending
required in the Canadian case is not like fixing a broken arm.
It is much more tenuous and involves bringing citizens
together not otherwise in touch with each other, who lack a
sense of nationalism.
Loretta Czernis applies her sociological training in docu-
ment analysis to study one government prescription for what
ails Canadians. The Report of the Task Force on Canadian
Unity rewrote Canada by reinventing patriotism, essentially
inviting Canadians to imagine a new Canada. The Report
itself is the product of what she calls the federal writing
machine which exists to continually rewrite and thus reinvent
Canada.
Czernis's contextural reading of the Report occurs on two
levels. Reading technically, she examines the Report's anony-
mous writing style that asks readers to imitate its own con-
clusions (be patriotic, buy a flag, shop at home).
Gestural reading invites reading as performance. Cana-
dians are invited to participate in reshaping Canada by read-
ing Canada allegorically, as a social body, capable of changing
its form.
What a document may intend is not always the same as
what is read into it. Mistakes can and do occur in the reading.
Czernis suggests that these "mistakes" constitute a signifi-
cant form of resistance to the anonymous writing machine.
Loretta Czernis teaches Sociology at Bishop's University in
Lennoxville, Quebec.
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Wea
a Canadian
Anonymous Writing,
Personal Reading
by Loretta Czernis
Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Czernis, Loretta, 1952-
Weaving a Canadian allegory : anonymous writing,
personal reading
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-88920-232-X
1. Task Force on Canadian Unity. 2. Federal
government - Canada - Historiography. 3. Nationalism
- Canada - Historiography. 4. Governmental
investigations - Canada - Historiography.
I. Title.
FC98.C94 1994 971 C94-930418-2
F1027.C94 1994
Copyright © 1994
WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY PRESS
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
N2L 3C5
Cover design by Jose Martucci, Design Communications
Cover illustration: Smoke on the Water by Marcel Saint-Pierre,
used with the permission of the artist.
Printed in Canada
Weaving a Canadian Allegory: Anonymous Writing, Personal Reading has
been produced from a manuscript supplied in electronic form by the
author.
All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon
may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, elec-
tronic or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the pub-
lisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping or reproducing in
information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be
directed in writing to the Canadian Reprography Collective, 214 King
Street West, Suite 312, Toronto, Ontario M5V 3S6.
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Preface ix
Introduction xv
1 Concerning Contexture 1
2 Reading and Projection 7
3 Confederation and the Body of Conflict 27
4 Writing a Body of Unity: Rewriting
"Canada and the Search for Unity" 49
5 Mytho-history to Allegory: Tomorrow's
Unity as Patriot's Progress 73
6 Misreading Nietzsche, Rewriting Bloom 83
Afterword 89
Appendix: Outlining The Report of the
Task Force on Canadian Unity 93
Notes 113
Bibliography 119
Index 128
v
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Acknowledgements
ts
T
his book has been published with the help of a grant
from the Social Science Federation of Canada, using
funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Re-
search Council of Canada.
Additional funding has been provided by Bishop's Univer-
sity.
I would also like to thank Dr. James Porter who super-
vised the doctoral dissertation from which this book emerged.
vii
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Preface
I
taught the Task Force Report (also known as "Pepin-
Robarts") when I was preparing a course on Canadian
society as part of the summer curriculum at Algoma College
in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. Presenting chapters from a
research report on Canadian unity provided the students
with some insight into one federalist version of Canada.
More than this, reading the Report stimulated a great deal of
heart-wrenching discussion about personal aspirations.
Many of the students felt that there was a serious discrep-
ancy between what they had been promised by the federal
government and what they had actually received. One of
these students was an Ojibwa woman. Two were steelwork-
ers laid off by Algoma Steel after many years of committed
service to the company. Two were homemakers. Along with
three young full-time students, this group began a dialogue
with me about Canada which was fuelled by our readings of
the Task Force Report. I am deeply indebted to these stu-
dents who inspired me to further this reading.
I tend to read a text as though I were studying the weave
of a fabric. I came to recognize this pattern by studying the
work of Mary Ann Caws, who has written much about the
texture of texts. Written textures are subject to "the incon-
stant and obsessive co-constructions of observers and texts,
where a roughness and deformation signal the high points of
interest."1 The written can also be read as a potential cloth,
with some threadlike remnants ready to be woven, which
will in turn inspire the spinning of new threads as writing.
A reader weaves colourful but unfashioned threads. All
readings are situated in time, in space, and in particular con-
Notes to the Preface are on p. 113.
ix