Marginal Notes on Cultural Studies in Canada

Abstract

In recent years, postcolonial theory, feminist theory, queer theory, and environmental thought have challenged the practice and study of culture and catalysed richly productive methodological and political debates. Artists and scholars have been encouraged to explore what it means to speak on behalf of a specific community of interests: for/about women, people of colour, gays or lesbians, non-human others; even about Canada, when academics organize international conferences in order to hear and orchestrate representative marginalia from diverse locations. At such events I have found that the term `cultural studies' disguises a multiplicity of concepts and vocabularies, and have found myself compelled to map my own thinking in terms of Canadian conceptual resources. This paper seeks to present a brief portrait of the history of discourses about culture, politics, and the nation in Canada that in my view contribute to the shaping of cultural studies in this country. This is not the same, I hope I need not point out, as setting out a nationalist agenda for culture in the traditional sense. This distinction identifies one of the great tasks of cultural studies today. .