ISBN:
0802092276
,
0802094546
,
9780802094544
,
9780802092274
Language:
English
Pages:
XIII, 410 S
DDC:
305.800971
Keywords:
Nationalism
;
Canada Race relations
;
Canada Social conditions
;
Kanada
;
Nationalbewusstsein
;
Ethnische Beziehungen
;
Minderheitenfrage
Abstract:
Drawing on the theoretical traditions of political economy and cultural studies, this book examines how the national subject has been conceptualized in Canada at particular historical junctures, and how state policies and popular practices have exalted certain subjects over others.
Abstract:
Questions of national identity, indigenous rights, citizenship and migration have acquired unprecedented relevance in the current age of globalization. In "Exalted Subjects", controversial feminist scholar Sunera Thobani examines the complexities of these questions in a Canadian context. Drawing on the theoretical traditions of political economy and cultural studies, Thobani examines how the national subject has been conceptualized in Canada at particular historical junctures, and how state policies and popular practices have exalted certain subjects over others. Foregrounding the concept of 'race' as a critical relation of power, Thobani looks at how processes of racialization contribute to sustaining and replenishing the politics of nation formation and national subjectivity. She challenges the popular notion that the significance of racialized practices in Canada has declined in the post-Second World War period, and traces key continuities and discontinuities in these practices from Confederation into the present. Finally, Thobani develops the concept of 'exaltation' to examine how the state seeks to 'fix' and 'stabilize' its subjects in relation to the nation's 'others.'
Abstract:
An absorbing study, "Exalted Subjects" makes a contribution to the transformation of the racialized and gendered underpinnings of both nation and subject-formation.
