Abstract
Canadian literature in English has long negotiated issues pertaining to citizenship. Regarding political rights struggles and debates concerning multiculturalism and recognition, it has increasingly done so using an explicit terminology of citizenship as a means of addressing questions of rights, belonging, and agency since the 1970s and particularly the 1980s. By doing so, Anglophone Canadian literature illustrates an obvious overlap with the resurgence of interest in concepts of citizenship since the 1990s. This chapter provides an overview of the debate on citizenship and literature in Canada as well as of relevant understandings of citizenship as a concept of membership and belonging, as status and practice, formal and substantive, and it discusses specific notions of cultural citizenship as ‘co-authorship’ (Boele van Hensbroek).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
The decision to exclude writing from and about Quebec pays tribute to the fact that both the legal and cultural constellations as well as debates about interculturalism differ significantly from Anglo-Canada. The complexities of both Francophone and Anglophone literature in Quebec regarding conceptualizations of citizenship warrant a study in their own right and are thus not addressed here.
- 2.
As H. D. Forbes points out, Canadian official multiculturalism was not well received in Quebec, for the Québécois tended to see it as an attempt ‘to reduce the Quebec nation (that is, the Québécois) to the status of a mere ethnic group’ (2010, p. 38). Indigenous peoples tended to reject multiculturalism for the same reason.
- 3.
In his 1965 study The Vertical Mosaic, that is, before multiculturalist policies, John Porter formulates another critical point. When distinguishing between structural and behavioral assimilation, he argues ‘it is indisputable that some form of group affiliation lying between the extremes of the mass and the individual is a prerequisite for mental health. However, there is no intrinsic reason that these groupings should be on ethnic lines. Where there is strong association between ethnic affiliation and social class, as there almost always has been, a democratic society may require a breaking down of the ethnic impediment to equality, particularly the equality of opportunity’ (2015, p. 73).
- 4.
- 5.
Citizenship as a form of coercion is particularly important for Aboriginal concerns, since historically granting citizenship to Indigenous peoples was ‘aimed toward the goal of eliminating ‘the Indian Problem,’ as it was sometimes called, by absorbing Native people into the body politic, thus making them effectively disappear. If they were citizens, then by definition they could no longer be Indians’ (Cariou 2007, p. 57). This will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 3.
- 6.
While ‘Nisei’ denotes the second, Canadian-born generation, ‘Issei’ refers to the first (that is, the immigrant) generation. The terms ‘Sansei,’ ‘Yonsei,’ and ‘Gosei’ for the third, fourth, and fifth generations are also in use, but play no role in the context of the texts analyzed in this study.
- 7.
However, even this distinction is not entirely clear-cut, as ‘membership’ is also a cultural construction (see Llanque 2010, p. 164).
- 8.
For detailed discussions of liberal multiculturalism and its effect on conceptions of citizenship, see, for instance, Kymlicka (1995). The concept of multicultural citizenship leaves aside other aspects of social stratification and identification, namely gender and sexuality, but also questions of class. Literary texts, as will be shown, lend themselves particularly well to the analysis of citizenship in light of intersectionality.
- 9.
Within the context of my argument, I am adopting and slightly adapting Benhabib’s term. Benhabib defines ‘democratic iterations’ as ‘complex processes of public argument, deliberation, and exchange through which universalist rights claims are contested and contextualized, invoked and revoked, posited and positioned throughout legal and political institutions, as well as in the associations of civil society,’ pointing to her understanding of iteration as varied repetition that makes sense of ‘an authoritative original in a new and different context’ (2011, p. 129). She does not explicitly include literature as an institution in the context of which societal norms and concepts are reiterated and necessarily varied. However, I find her concept helpful to capture what I understand as literature’s ‘soft’ way of intervening and participating in social and political discourses.
References
Adorno, Theodor W. 1992. “Commitment.” Notes to Literature. Vol. 2. Edited by Rolf Tiedemann. Translated by Shierry Weber Nicholson, 76–94. New York: Columbia University Press.
Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
Andrew, Caroline. 2004. “Women as Citizens in Canada.” In From Subjects to Citizens: A Hundred Years of Citizenship in Australia and Canada, edited by Pierre Boyer, Linda Cardinal, and David Headon, 95–106. Ottawa, ON: University of Ottawa Press.
Armstrong, Jeannette. 1985. Slash. Penticton, BC: Theytus.
———. 2000. Whispering in Shadows. Penticton, BC: Theytus.
Barrett, Paul, Darcy Ballantyne, Camille Isaacs, and Kris Singh. 2017. “The Unbearable Whiteness of CanLit.” The Walrus, July 26, 2017. https://thewalrus.ca/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-canlit/. Accessed on July 28, 2017.
Bedorf, Thomas. 2010. Verkennende Anerkennung: Über Identität und Politik. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Benhabib, Seyla. 2004. The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents, and Citizens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2011. Dignity in Adversity: Human Rights in Troubled Times. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bennett, David. 1998. Introduction to Multicultural States: Rethinking Difference and Identity, edited by David Bennett, 1–25. London: Routledge.
Berman, Jessica. 2001. Modernist Fiction, Cosmopolitanism, and the Politics of Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bissoondath, Neil. 1994. Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada. Toronto: Penguin Books.
Boele van Hensbroek, Pieter. 2010. “Cultural Citizenship as a Normative Notion for Activist Practices.” Citizenship Studies 14 (3): 317–30.
Bowen, Deborah C. 2010. Stories of the Middle Space: Reading the Ethics of Postmodern Realisms. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Brand, Dionne. 2005. What We All Long For. New York: Thomas Dunne Books.
———. 2014. Love Enough. Toronto: Knopf.
Brydon, Diana. 2007. “Metamorphoses of a Discipline: Rethinking Canadian Literature Within Institutional Contexts.” In Trans.Can.Lit: Resituating the Study of Canadian Literature, edited by Smaro Kamboureli and Roy Miki, 1–16. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
Campbell, Maria. (1973) 1982. Halfbreed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Cariou, Warren. 2007. “‘Yes, by Coercion’: Questions of Citizenship in Canadian Aboriginal Literature.” In What Is Your Place? Indigeneity and Immigration in Canada, edited by Hartmut Lutz with Thomas Rafico Ruiz, 55–60. Augsburg: Wißner.
Chariandy, David. 2011. “Black Canadas and the Question of Diasporic Citizenship.” In Narratives of Citizenship: Indigenous and Diasporic Peoples Unsettle the Nation-State, edited by Aloys N. M. Fleischmann, Nancy Van Styvendale, and Cody McCarroll, 323–46. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press.
Chariandy, David, and Sophie McCall. 2008. “Introduction: Citizenship and Cultural Belonging.” West Coast Line 59: 4–12.
Corse, Sarah M. 1997. Nationalism and Literature: The Politics of Culture in Canada and the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Davey, Frank. 2016. “Constructing ‘Canadian Literature’: A Retrospective.” In The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature, edited by Cynthia Sugars, 17–40. New York: Oxford University Press.
Edugyan, Esi. 2011. Half-Blood Blues. New York: Picador.
Fleischmann, Aloys N. M., and Nancy Van Styvendale. 2011. Introduction to Narratives of Citizenship: Indigenous and Diasporic Peoples Unsettle the Nation-State, edited by Aloys N. M. Fleischmann, Nancy Van Styvendale, and Cody McCarroll, xi–xlv. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press.
Foggo, Cheryl. 1990. Pourin’ Down Rain. Calgary, AB: Detselig Enterprises.
Forbes, H. D. 2010. “Authenticity/Recognition: Charles Taylor in Theory and Practice.” In The Canadian Mosaic in the Age of Transnationalism, edited by Jutta Ernst and Brigitte Glaser, 37–48. Heidelberg: Winter Verlag.
Fraser, Nancy. 1990. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” Social Text 25/26: 56–80.
———. 2008. “Reframing Justice in a Globalized World.” In Adding Insult to Injury: Nancy Fraser Debates Her Critics, edited by Kevin Olson, 273–91. London: Verso.
Galabuzi, Grace-Edward. 2011. “Hegemonies, Continuities, and Discontinuities of Multiculturalism and the Anglo-Franco Conformity Order.” In Home and Native Land: Unsettling Multiculturalism in Canada, edited by May Chazan, Lisa Helps, Anna Stanley, and Sonali Thakkar, 58–80. Toronto: Between the Lines.
Goldman, Marlene. 2012. Dispossession: Haunting in Canadian Fiction. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Hill, Lawrence. (2015) 2016. The Illegal. New York: Norton.
Holston, James, and Arjun Appadurai. 1996. “Cities and Citizenship.” Public Culture 8 (2): 187–204.
Honneth, Axel. 1995. The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Translated by Joel Anderson. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Isin, Engin F. 2002. Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Isin, Engin F., and Patricia K. Wood. 1999. Citizenship and Identity. London: Sage.
Kamboureli, Smaro. 2000. Scandalous Bodies. Diasporic Literature in English Canada. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.
Kogawa, Joy. 1981. Obasan. Toronto: Penguin Books.
———. 1992. Itsuka. Toronto: Penguin Books.
———. 2005. Emily Kato. Toronto: Penguin Books.
Kymlicka, Will. 1995. Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
———. 2007. Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics of Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kymlicka, Will, and Wayne Norman. 1994. “Return of the Citizen: A Survey of Recent Work on Citizenship Theory.” Ethics 104 (2): 352–81.
Lai, Larissa. 2014. Slanting I, Imagining We: Asian Canadian Literary Production in the 1980s and 1990s. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
Livesay, Dorothy. 1950. Call My People Home. Toronto: Ryerson Press.
Llanque, Marcus. 2010. “On Constitutional Membership.” In The Twilight of Constitutionalism? edited by Petra Dobner and Martin Loughlin, 162–78. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2015. “The Concept of Citizenship Between Membership and Belonging.” In Migration, Regionalization, Citizenship: Comparing Canada and Europe, edited by Katja Sarkowsky, Rainer-Olaf Schultze, and Sabine Schwarze, 101–26. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
Maracle, Lee. 2015. “Sharing Space and Time.” In Memory Serves: Oratories. Edited by Smaro Kamboureli, 115–27. Edmonton, AB: NeWest Press.
Marshall, T. H. 1950. “Citizenship and Social Class.” In Citizenship and Social Class and Other Essays, 1–85. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mathur, Ashok. 2007. “Transubracination: How Writers of Colour Became CanLit.” In Trans.Can.Lit: Resituating the Study of Canadian Literature, edited by Smaro Kamboureli and Roy Miki, 141–52. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
Miller, Toby. 2001. “Introducing … Cultural Citizenship.” Social Text 69 (Winter): 1–5.
Nussbaum, Martha C. 1995. Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life. Boston: Beacon Press.
———. 2010. Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Ondaatje, Michael. 1987. In the Skin of a Lion. Toronto: Penguin Books.
———. 2000. Anil’s Ghost. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.
Pennee, Donna Palmateer. 2004. “Literary Citizenship: Culture (Un)Bounded, Culture (Re)Distributed.” In Home-Work: Postcolonialism, Pedagogy, and Canadian Literature, edited by Cynthia Sugars, 75–85. Ottawa, ON: University of Ottawa Press.
Porter, John. 2015. The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class and Power in Canada. 50th Anniversary ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. First Published 1965.
Rosaldo, Renato. 1994. “Cultural Citizenship and Educational Democracy.” Cultural Anthropology 9 (3): 402–11.
Said, Edward W. 1983a. “Introduction: Secular Criticism.” In The World, the Text, and the Critic, 1–30. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———. 1983b. “The World, the Text, and the Critic.” In The World, the Text, and the Critic, 31–53. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Saul, John Ralston. 2008. A Fair Country: Telling Truths about Canada. Toronto: Penguin Books (Kindle Edition).
Smith, Rogers M. 2002. “Modern Citizenship.” In Handbook of Citizenship Studies, edited by Engin F. Isin and Bryan S. Turner, 105–15. London: Sage.
Stephens, Angharad Closs. 2010. “Citizenship Without Community: Time, Design and the City.” Citizenship Studies 14 (1): 31–46.
Stevenson, Nick. 2003. Cultural Citizenship: Cosmopolitan Questions. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Szeman, Imre. 2003. Zones of Instability: Literature, Postcolonialism, and the Nation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Tan, Kathy-Ann. 2015. Reconfiguring Citizenship and National Identity in the North American Literary Imagination. Detroit: Wayne State University Press (Kindle edition).
Tator, Carol, Frances Henry, and Winston Mattis. 1998. Challenging Racism in the Arts: Case Studies of Controversy and Conflict. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Taylor, Charles. 1994. “The Politics of Recognition.” In Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, edited and introduced by Amy Gutman, 25–73. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. First Published 1992.
———. 2004. Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Thomas, Brook. 2007. Civic Myths: A Law-and-Literature Approach to Citizenship. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Turner, Bryan. 1992. “Outline of a Theory of Citizenship.” In Dimensions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Community, edited by Chantal Mouffe, 33–62. London: Verso.
Verdecchia, Guillermo. 1998. “The Several Lives of Citizen Suárez.” In Citizen Suárez: Stories, 36–76. Burnaby, BC: Talonbooks.
Von Burg, Alessandra Beasley. 2012. “Stochastic Citizenship: Toward a Rhetoric of Mobility.” Philosohphy and Rhetoric 45 (4): 351–75.
Wah, Fred. 1997. Diamond Grill. Edmonton, AB: NeWest Press.
Webber, Jeremy. 2015. The Constitution of Canada: A Contextual Analysis. Oxford: Hart.
Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sarkowsky, K. (2018). Recognition, Citizenship, and Canadian Literature. In: Narrating Citizenship and Belonging in Anglophone Canadian Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96935-0_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96935-0_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-96934-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-96935-0
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)