Geography lessons: On being an insider/outsider to the Canadian nation

Notes:

• AUTHOR: Himani Bannerji (born 1942) is a Bengali–Canadian writer and academic, teaching in the Department of Sociology at York University, Canada. She is also known for her activist work and poetry. She received her B.A. and M.A. in Kolkata, and her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto.  Bannerji works in the areas of Marxist, feminist and anti-racist theory. She is especially focused on reading colonial discourse through Karl Marx's concept of ideology, and putting together a reflexive analysis of gender, race and class. Bannerji also does much lecturing about the Gaze and othering and silencing of women which are marginalized.

  AUDIENCE:  Academic - post-colonial Canadiana

  ARGUMENT:

  • Locates and describes Canadian hegemony and its multiple tensions as a (white-settler-colonial state and liberal democracy, dependencies with the US economically and culturally with Britain, ideas f citizenship and equality contrasted with the Native, immigrant gender based realities) and how it dislocates those who are outside "the citizen" contstructed primarily as white, male in a myriad of intersectionaly particular ways
  • Describes the mutliplcity of labels and categorization for Canada's peoples as a means of "organizing the state apparatus, its regulations and polciy functions and for enabling the ideological organization of "relations of ruling"... that "incorporate the everyday person into the national project
  • Describe a crisis of citizenship in terms of class, gender and race
  • Describes the [white] women's rights movement as a fight for inclusion in the national project and as seperate from the experiences of non-white women
  • Remarks on previous writers (Anderson, Atwood) have left out particular identities in their analyses

  EVIDENCE:

  • Literature review / analysis
  • Media analysis
  • Historical

  WHAT'S LEFT OUT?:

  The article definately got my back up, as some one who identifies in part as Canadian

  Especially elements of her analysis lends itself to some exaggeration.

  "That my assertions are not a matter of individual paranoia is
  evident in the fact that Ontario has established a "hotline" to prompt
  us to report anonymously on our neighbours and anyone else whom
  we think might be cheating "the system." This "snitch line" violates
  human dignity/human rights, creates a state of legal surveillance,
  and organizes people into vigilante"style relationships with one
  another. It brings racism and sexism to a boiling point by stimulating
  an everyday culture of racist sexislt'l, and it creates an atmosphere
  that can only be described as fascistic. Clearly, reporting "the jew"
  among us is not over yet!"

  "Native peoples are like the Palestinians, who form a nation without a state and are subject to contiual repression."

  She needs more evidence to support claims of encouraging and discouraging reproduction in Canada as well.

  Though I think there is some elucidation that comes with comparisons to South African apartide or "reporting Jews" during Nazism,  I think we lose alot in direct comparisons and metaphors, and goes against the grain of understanding the specificifities of these different intersections.

  MOST COMPELLING QUOTE:

  
  "Canada" then cannot be taken as a given. It is obviously a
  construction, a set of representations, embodying certain types of
  political and cultural! communities and their operations. These
  communities were themselves constructed in agreement with
  certain ideas regarding skin color, history, language (English/
  French), and other cultural signifiers - all of which may be
  subsumed under the ideological category "white.'"

  The Canadian state, according to its Charter of Rights and Freedoms, claims not to discriminate
  on the bases of race, gender, and so on. But it is obvious that, by its
  very organization of sodal communities in "race" and ethnic terms,
  the state constantly creates "Canadians" and" others"

  IMPLICATIONS:

  Describes Multiculturalism only to the extent as it does not disrupt Canadian hegemony (similar to Razack's analysis)

  IMPLICATIONS FOR INTERSECTIONALITY:

  • Hegemony leaves particular intersectionalities out, and may draw in parts of people's identities and leave out others
    

  CONNECTIONS TO OTHER READINGS:

  Razack

  QUESTION(S) FOR DISCUSSION:

  • How does Bannerji position herself?  Is this in conflict with her lived in reality?
  • Where does her analysis lead us?

Attachments

• Banerji(2002)Geography lessons.pdf
• Google Scholar Linked Page