Is Canada Postcolonial?: Unsettling Canadian Literature

Lydia Forssander-Song is a sessional instructor in the English
Department at Trinity Western University.

Laura Moss first asked the question “Is Canada Postcolonial?” in a
paper she presented at the 1999 Association of Canadian College and
University Teachers of English (ACCUTE) conference in Sherbrooke,
Quebec. The highly provocative nature of the question and potentially
wide-ranging answers led Moss to organize an “Is Canada
Postcolonial?” conference in 2000 at the University of Manitoba. The
essays in this book began as conference papers; they have been
substantially revised for publication, and are organized in four
sections.

Part 1, “Questioning Canadian Postcolonialism,” includes essays by
George Elliot Clarke, Neil Besner, Diana Brydon, and Donna Palmateer
Pennee that interrogate the terms “Canada” and “postcolonial.”
Brydon, in her expanded key-note address on the question “Is Canada
Postcolonial?,” answers “It depends. It depends on the definitions;
it depends on who is asking the question, from what position, in space,
time, and privilege.” She goes on to theorize the settler colony as an
unstable site for memory and calls for “the need to move beyond a
politics of representation toward a politics of accountability.”

Part 2, “Postcolonial Methodologies,” features essays by Susan
Gingell, Judith Leggatt, Mridula Nath Chakraborty, and Chelva
Kanaganayakam that question the relationship of postcolonialism to
feminism, queer theory, Native writing, immigrant writing, minority
writing, and multiculturalism.

Part 3, “Is Canadian Literature Postcolonial?,” contains essays by
Pam Perkins, Douglas Ivison, Cecily Devereux, Barbara Bruce, Manina
Jones, Karen McFarlane, Amy Kroeker, Jim Zucchero, Marie Vautier, and
Robert Budde that apply post-colonial readings to specific works of
Canadian literature.

Part 4, “Meditations on the Question,” provides a conclusion to
this collection with brief remarks by Lens Findlay, Terry Goldie, Victor
Ramraj, and Stephen Slemon. Budde and Goldie deal openly with questions
of post-colonialism and racism.

This collection does not provide any clear answers to the question
posed. Instead, it asks more questions, ensuring that the lively and
fruitful discussions will continue.