Weaving a Canadian Allegory

Availability:
Ebook in PDF format. Available for immediate download after we receive your order

DRM:
Watermark

Publication Year:
2009

ISBN-13: 9780889208469

<p> Loretta Czernis applies her sociological training in document analysis to study one government prescription for what ails Canadians. The <i>Report of the Task Force on Canadian Unity</i> rewrote Canada by reinventing patriotism, essentially inviting Canadians to imagine a new Canada. The <i>Report</i> itself is the product of what she calls the “federal writing machine” which exists to continually rewrite and thus reinvent Canada. Czernis’ contextual reading of the <i>Report</i> occurs on two levels: reading technically, she examines the <i>Report</i>’s anonymous writing style that asks readers to imitate its own conclusions (be patriotic, buy a flag, shop at home). Gestural reading invites reading as performance. Canadians are invited to participate in reshaping Canada by reading 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 significant form of resistance to the anonymous writing machine. <i>Weaving a Canadian Allegory</i> will be of special interest to Canadianists, sociologists and to those involved in cultural, political and textual studies. </p>