Canada's Heritage Moments As National Pedagogies of Citizenship: a Struggle Over Definitions
Canada's Heritage Moments as national pedagogies of citizenship: a struggle over definitions
Patricia Durish, University of Toronto, Canada
Paper presented at SCUTREA, 31st Annual Conference, 3-5 July 2001, University of East London
Citizenship and Nationalism
Depa Mehta is an Indo Canadian film maker whose most recent films include 'Earth' and 'Fire', part of a proposed filmic trilogy concerning India's winning of independence from British colonial domination and the subsequent partition of the country into India and Pakistan. She uttered the above words in response to a reporter's question asking why, considering her Canadian citizenship she has not made films reflecting Canadian themes and content. Her quotation illustrates the important role that national culture, or the national imaginary, plays in fostering a sense of belonging among national subjects. A sense of belonging which directly affects our ability to neatly, or fully, inhabit the identity of citizen despite being politically permitted to do so.
National culture consists of stories, memories, symbols and images, which produce meanings about the nation that we, as citizens, then identify with (Hall in Henry and others 2000: 32). These images, stories, myths, symbols and memories together form the deep structure, or culture of a nation, to which those who truly belong are naturally attuned and thus identified, and from which outsiders are excluded (Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1992: 41). The degree to which we are able to identify depends on our social location, more specifically our race, class, gender and sexual identity. National identities, produced and communicated through national culture, underscore and authorize various forms of social relations, institutional arrangements and policies which in turn serve to support the identities so produced.
Despite the pride that we, in Canada, take in declaring ourselves a 'nation of immigrants', Canadian national discourse is marked by exclusions, erasures, omissions, and silences. The Canadian imaginary, which lies at the heart of our national discourse, is both partial and particular. As Himani Bannerji states, 'citizenship does not provide automatic membership in the nation's community' and 'living in a nation does not, by definition, provide one with a prerogative to "imagine" (Bannerji 2000: 66). Our ability, or inability, to fit, and toi magine, is dictated by the particularity of our identities.
The idea of citizenship is usually discussed in reference to liberal theories of citizenship which are grounded in principles of tolerance, universalism, and inclusion. These same theories also inform curriculum development in the area of civic education. However, the contradiction inherent to liberal democracies, founded on ideas of civic nationalism, is that this liberal discourse of tolerance, inclusivity, equality and universalism co-exists with what is in practice a very exclusionary model of citizenship. One within which culture, despite claims to the contrary, plays a pivotal role in setting out the terms upon which fitness for citizenship rests. In his investigation of British nationalism, Paul Gilroy confirms that new formulations of racial exclusions rely less on biological classification and more on the construction of national cultures as a means of policing the boundaries of the nation and setting out the terms against which membership is determined (Gilroy1991: 31). A reliance on culture allows for the naturalization of unequal social relations of citizenship, as culture is considered to transcend politics. Disavowed is the inherently political nature of culture, as a space where power operates freely to constitute identities along particular lines of dominance and subordination.
Lately, feminist theorist have abandoned tackling the problems associated with the issue of citizenship and difference from the standpoint of liberal theory, and instead have begun concentrating their attention on the making of the imagined community of the nation through the production and management of particular representations of difference1. Cultural theorists such as Homi Bhaba have claimed that modernity is marked by the erasure of difference in theory (Bhaba 1994: 38). However, in order to sustain relations of dominance and subordination on the ground, diversity must be produced and managed as difference, an objective which is accomplished culturally.
For example, as a 'nation of immigrants', an ethic of tolerance is fundamental to the Canadian imaginary. The image of Canada as 'tolerant democracy' relies on a particular representation of difference, one which denies a history of internal colonialism and the various attempts made to gatekeep and manage difference by reworking the identities of various immigrant groups (Ia covetta 2000: 12).
Canadian national culture serves to acknowledge and celebrate, in stories, myths, memories and symbols, the fact of difference in a form which erases the link between identities and unequal material relations. For instance, Canada Day celebrations frequently include depictions of the unique culture of First Nations peoples without referring to the poverty, chronic unemployment and skyrocketing suicide rates which are currently destroying these communities2. In fact, the populist image of the 'ordinary' Canadian assumes an absence of culture, so that the presence of culture becomes the very marking of difference and a basis for discrimination.
Canadian Heritage Moments: historical memory and narratives of nation-building
'A convincing argument about the nation's past is a weighty ally in soliciting support for a particular vision of the future' (Dawson1998: 5) This paper represents an analysis of a particular example of Canadian national culture - Canadian Heritage Moments.
Heritage Moments are commercial-length television spots, approximately two minutes long, each representing a retelling of important moments in Canadian history. In keeping with an official policy of multiculturalism, the segments were chosen to represent Canada's ethnic and regional diversity. Although originally created to be shown on television and in movie theatres, they have since expanded to include curriculum guides, lesson plans and bibliographies for use in schools. There are sixty Heritage Moments in total, spanning from before 1799 to the present.
Heritage Moments are important because they are sites for the formation of the dominant imaginary of Canada, or Canadian national culture. They are an example of the conscious cultural production of national subjectivities, which support the delineation of the boundaries of citizenship in Canada. As expressions of the popular history of Canada, they represent the common sense knowledges that circulate in the everyday, and upon which we rely in order to situate ourselves, and others, in relation to the nation. Heritage moments are one example of the contested terrain of Canadian cultural politics whereupon national identities are forged.
Although the ways in which women, First Nations, immigrants and so on are represented in this series forms the bulk of my analysis, the overall form, asides from the content, within which these representations are framed operates as a powerful technology for managing diversity and sustaining dominance. The fact that Heritage Moments are historical narratives raises interesting issues regarding the relationship between historical memory and nationalism.
Of interest is how versions of the past condition and perpetuate particular modes of exclusion, inclusion and ratify particular presents; and how power operates to privilege specific events, meanings and epistemic frames - dismissing what doesn't fit or what constitutes an unwelcomed challenge to the status quo. Any selection process privileges a particular set of interests via the promotion of an ideal form - style, tone, method - in addition to the selection of content.
Historical narratives of nation-building are important elements of national culture and one compelling means by which difference is represented in a way that authorizes various exclusionary practices. They are by definition partial in their remembering, forgetting historical particularity in their need to turn out a singular, teleological and coherent tale of the nation. Narratives of nation-building, such as the Heritage series, form an important part of the 'narrative of the nation'. They are closely linked to the images, memories, symbols and rituals which 'stand for or represent, the shared experiences, sorrows, and triumphs and disasters, which give meaning to the nation' (Hall 1992: 93).
Nation-building is a western project. Its structures, forms, desires, and classifying and differentiating practices are essential to western modernity. In fact, 'national identity is modernity's fundamental identity' (Greenfield in Mackey 2000: 5). Similarly, the idea that possessing a culture - which is bounded, differentiated, consistent - is a necessary prerequisite for claiming an identity - either national or individual - is itself caught up in western modernity, based as it is on the western ideology of possessive individualism.
The idea of culture lying at the centre of identity has become axiomatic - naturalized - as has the fact of the nation.
Heritage Moments are described as 'bringing Canada's past to the mass audience'. Their goal being 'to make the issues of Canada's development and national life - its heroes, its triumph, and its contributions - come alive on our television and movie screens' (Introduction, The Heritage Moment Project). From the outset we are led to expect a narrative form which privileges the individual over the collective, the spectacular or the exceptional over the commonplace and everyday, and the public over the private, all of which are framed as examples of nation-building.
Historical events are fetishized in that they are divorced from the social context of their emergence. They are captured as single moments in time - static - their meaning forever fixed, translatable and uncontested. This form is itself gendered, raced, classed and sexualized. It represents the space occupied by dominant subjects and is best situated to capture their experiences. It is the narrative of the ruler rather than the ruled3.
The very fact that Heritage segments are framed in the context of nation-building means that they conform at a structural level to this project, a fact which delimits the possibilities of what they can express in both narrative and ideological terms.National culture necessarily employs a form of strategic essentialism, as it rests on the assumption that there exists a universal and consistent national identity central to its discourse. Tellings of the nation and its history define the parameters of how stories of the nation's people are to be framed. Naturalizing the space and form of the nation through the repetition of particular version of its history and requiring others to conform to a story of Canada in which their role is seen solely in terms of their relationship to national project of nation-building. The repetition of teleological tales of nation-building makes it difficult to pursue counter narratives of the nation, reducing our ability to imagine and express alternatives.
By and large it is the content rather than the form which is contested by groups who clamour for inclusion in the nation. The response from the dominant culture has been to amend the content of popular histories. Accordingly, the Heritage Moments contain a significant amount of aboriginal content. However, it offers up the disparate histories of First Nations framed solely in terms of the story of Canadian nation-building and their respective contributions to this process.
Prior to 'contact' (in itself an interesting way of delineating time periods through employing the arrival of the white man as the frame against which time is measured), Aboriginal peoples are depicted creating the Iroquois Confederacy, thereby laying the foundations of their contribution to Canada's present system of governance - the same system of governance that they will spend the rest of their nation's history struggling to emancipate themselves from.
First Nations people are not portrayed as being on equal terms with the two founding nations of Canada - the French and the English - whose history emphasizes a legacy of tolerance and cooperation. First Nations' narrative inclusion is mediated through their relationship to white men. For example, various moments depict First Nations peoples providing the name of Canada to Cartier or aiding the survival of pioneer families in harvesting syrup. The only mention of an 'Indian' not in the context of his relationship to white men is Grew Owl, who was himself a white man who successfully passed as native. For the most part, First Nations people are not designated by gender, which means that we can either assume masculinity or that their gender is irrelevant. Obviously, both options are highly problematic.
Depictions of First Nations people also provide the conditions of possibility for illustrating Canada's mythical tolerance. For example, Sitting Bull is said to have been so confident in the respect that he and his people would receive at the hands of RCMP that he chooses to stay in Canada rather than return to the United States. This is an important means of demonstrating how Canada, possessing a history of tolerance towards outsiders - here the term includes any groups who do not belong to the two founding peoples - differ from our neighbours to the south and the bloody history of the American pacification of the Indian. The result is to claim a position of innocence for ourselves that allows us to leave our policies of internal colonialism, assimilation, and genocide of First Nations people unexamined.
Immigrants do not fare much better than the 'Indian' although they are marked more by their absence than their inclusion. Surprising for a 'nation of immigrants', immigrants and immigration appear to play a very small role - infinitesimal - in the building of the Canadian nation. There are two heritage moments that deal with issues of immigration and immigrants in Canada. The first depicts the adoption of Irish children - victims of the famine - by French Canadian families. The other is the story of a Chinese labourer who agreed to set a dangerous charge in exchange for his wife's passage to Canada. Both depict Canada as tolerant and welcoming - extending itself to receive outsiders into the national fold. This is a representation that very much supports the official story and policy of multiculturalism and again serves to differentiate us from our neighbours to the south, who favour assimilation. What is absent is a discussion of the abysmal treatment which most Irish famine victims received upon finally reaching Canadian shores, if they survived the passage over, or the fact that the Chinese labourer earned permission, as well as monies, to bring his wife to Canada - a privilege that was denied the rest of his countrymen. It also illustrates the gendered nature of Canada's history of immigration, by the fact that immigrant women were only allowed access to the nation on the basis of their relationship to men.
Difference here is represented in such a way as to condition a particular depiction of the Canadian populace made up of 'ordinary' - read French or English - rather than immigrant or aboriginal peoples. The fact that the character of the 'ordinary 'Canadian goes unmarked is an indication of the power and privilege that accompanies this identity. Its position is so central that is becomes the referent against which others' difference is measured. Dominant categories, although invisible, are powerfully normative as can be traced in their ability to set the terms by which fitness for citizenship is determined.
Gender, sexuality and nationalism
In their book Racialized Boundaries: Race, nation, gender, colour and class and the anti-racist struggle, Flora Anthias and Nira Yuval Davis outline the various ways in which women have been incorporated into the nation: as biological producers; as reproducers of boundaries of ethnic and nation groups; as transmitters of culture; as signifiers of difference; or as participants in national struggles (Anthias and Yuval- Davis 1992: 34). Accordingly, the women depicted in Heritage Moments conform to many of these classifications, whether it is Laura Secord informing the British of American plans to attack their garrison or midwives attending to the reproductive needs of the biological producers of the nation.
For the most part women enter history either fulfilling their traditional gender assignations in supporting roles or, when they step out of the private realm and into public spaces, to mak ehistory according to the terms laid down by patriarchy.
For example, included is the story of Dr Jennie Trout, the first female physician in Canada, and Agnes McPhail, the first female MP. Women, like immigrants and First Nations peoples, cannot enter history on their own terms, but only to the degree to which they are able to shed their particularity and conform to the masculine formulations already available. Their difference becomes the condition of either their absence or their remaking.
Themes of hegemonic masculinity prevail - victories and valour in sports, war and natural disasters. Although, not surprisingly, there is no outright mention of homosexuality, the stereotypical depiction of masculinity and femininity supports a system of compulsory heterosexuality based on the polarization, and supposed complimentarity, of the two genders. The nation, and hence the 'ordinary' Canadian, is everywhere assumed to be heterosexual - so much so that it need not be stated either.
The subsequent marginalization of First Nations peoples, women, and immigrants, along with the assumption of compulsory heterosexuality, corresponds to the marginal position that these various groups occupy in relation to national structures, policies and practices. The only hope for inclusion seems to lies in conformity and mimicry, hence Bhaba's claims of theoretical, or perhaps structural, erasure.