Excerpt from Cultural Grammars of Nation, Diaspora and Indigeneity in Canada edited by Christine Kim, Sophie McCall, and Melina Baum Singer

From the first chapter Diaspora and Nation in Métis Writing by Sophie McCall

For the past several years, a growing split has become increasingly evident in critical studies of diasporic and Aboriginal literatures in North America: while most critics of diasporic literatures engage with questions of migrancy in an era of transnational corporatization, the majority of critics of Aboriginal literatures have turned to the language of sovereignty and nationhood in an era of land claims, self-government agreements, and modern-day treaties. On the surface, this gap may seem appropriate. Theories of diaspora may be best suited to address immigrant experiences of displacement, while sovereignty, nationhood, and cultural autonomy are key terms to address current trends in Native politics. Many Aboriginal literary critics, such as Lee Maracle (1996), Craig Womack (1999), and Lisa Brooks (2006), directly link their arguments for “intellectual sovereignty” to current political negotiations over land and governance. Meanwhile, in the work of critics engaged with studies of diaspora—such as James Clifford (1997), Diana Brydon (2000), and Lily Cho (2006)—the language of nation is an unresolved tension, as these critics attempt to grapple with complex transnational formations of identity, labour, technology, and security. It is possible, as Brydon has argued, that “concepts of diaspora reach their limits in the claims to indigeneity” (23), especially in light of current decolonization movements in Aboriginal communities.

However, in this chapter I argue that a diasporic-Indigenous-sovereigntist critical approach may be best suited to address Métis writing, which paradoxically enacts national (i. e. , the Métis nation) and diasporic (i. e. , Métis-sage) identifications. 1 The work of Gregory Scofield, a Métis poet and writer whose ancestry can be traced back five generations to the Red River Settlement, and whose father he recently discovered was Polish-Jewish and German, underlines the necessity to articulate a flexible critical framework that explores both diasporic and national imaginings. Reading the poetry collections Native Canadiana: Songs from the Urban Rez (1996), I Knew Two Métis Women (1999), and Singing Home the Bones (2005), as well as his memoir Thunder through My Veins: Memories of a Métis Childhood (1999), I argue that nation and diaspora cannot be understood as binary opposites, but rather should be viewed as interdependent and mutually constitutive. More pressingly, I argue in favour of bringing in conversation discussions of diaspora, Aboriginal literary nationalism, and Métis subjectivity for the following reasons. Theories of diaspora may offer some vital insights into the history of displacement of Aboriginal peoples in Canada (i. e., the creation of reserves, the forced relocation of Aboriginal communities, and the scattering of Aboriginal communities and families through residential schools and foster care). By countering the tendency to look at specific diasporas separately, and to hierarchize them according to unspecified criteria, as Lily Cho warns against, we have an opportunity to build coalitions between disparate minority histories and to produce a model for relational history writing (Cho 13). Diaspora may also help address experiences of mixed-race, urban, or off-reserve Native peoples, who may or may not maintain strong ties to a sovereigntist nation based on a defined territory. We might garner a better understanding of sovereignties-in-motion, or confederacies, and develop new ways of conceptualizing Native nationalisms that address the wide range of relationships that Aboriginal peoples have to their ancestral territories. 2 By the same token, theories of Aboriginal nationhood have much to contribute to conversations about diaspora. Indigenous sovereigntist perspectives may help articulate community-based processes of participatory citizenship. Diasporic and Indigenous-sovereigntist standpoints share the desire to challenge settler nationalisms and expose the exclusions that have produced Canadian citizenship, even as they grapple with the often devastating effects of a highly mobile, neo-liberal, global capitalism. And theories of diaspora, in conjunction with theories of Indigenous sovereignties, potently acknowledge the underlying maps of Native North America and how First Nations territories traverse the 49th parallel.

It is my hope that the very awkwardness of a cobbled-together diasporic-Indigenous-sovereigntist critical perspective will produce a critical jostling that will question both Nativist and neo-colonial leanings that sometimes surface in these critical debates. In Scandalous Bodies: Diasporic Literatures in Canada (2000), Smaro Kamboureli states that her efforts to “trace the possibilities of diaspora” is reflective of her “desire to release [herself] from the hold that Nativism has on Canadian literature”(8). What she means by Nativism here is a false claim to belonging in settler-nationalist discourses, based on a manufactured one-to-one relationship between land, language, literature, and community. 3 Nativism produces a fairly high degree of anxiety in the work of other theorists of diaspora, most notably in the work of Paul Gilroy, who argues that diaspora furnishes an alternative to “primordial kinship and rooted belonging,” as well as a principled critique of “the disabling assumptions of automatic solidarity based on either blood or land” (Gilroy 123, 133, qtd. in Chariandy, “Postcolonial” par. 4). Similarly, in Nations without Nationalism (1993), Julia Kristeva speaks forcefully against Romantic-nationalist constructions, arguing that the “cult of origins” creates “a weird primal paradise family, ethnicity, nation, race” which, combined with “the soil, the blood, and the genius of the language,” are the roots of a xenophobic national idea (Kristeva, qtd. in Hoy 127). Yet as much as I support these critiques of Nativism, the question must be asked: What are the ramifications of the portrayals of claims to Indigenous belonging in light of Native peoples’ current struggles over land, resources, and development in Canada? Though none of these critics is talking about Indigenous populations in their hopes that diaspora as a critical tool may critique “a positivistic image of the ethnic imaginary” (Kamboureli xii), or offer a way to think “against race” (Gilroy), or imagine “nations without nationalism” (Kristeva), this silent space between Indigenous and diasporic theories demonstrates that bringing into conversation theories of diaspora, Aboriginal sovereignty, and Métis subjectivity is highly contentious; I need to proceed with caution in moving within and between these overlapping yet explosive discourses.

Excerpts from Dante & the Unorthodox: The Aesthetics of Transgression edited by James Miller

From Introduction: Retheologizing Dante by James Miller

Credenza

In keeping with the spirit of oltraggio [excess], the project of this volume is to discover just how far Dante was willing to push his faith beyond the doctrinal limits of the Catholic Church, and why his theological impulse to expand his belief is aesthetically important for the Commedia. One of his key words for faith, credenza, is especially pertinent to this project because it implies a restless impulse to judge the social value of beliefs and to test the strength of a culture's confidence in prevailing belief systems by comparison with rejected religions and philosophies. It is the term favoured by St. Peter himself, who uses it in the Heaven of the Fixed Stars during his examination of Dante's faith [a la credenza tua s'offerse: “it was offered to your belief”] (Par. 24. 123). Even Virgil, despite his lack of “the true faith” [la vera credenza] (Purg. 22. 77), uses the word at a crucial testing moment. Noticing Dante's reluctance to believe that the flames of Mount Purgatory will do him no harm, the Roman poet suggests that the pilgrim hold the hem of his garment in the fire and “find out for [him]self” [fatti far credenza] (Purg. 27. 29-30). In Dante's universe you don't simply “have” faith. You make it. All the motions in the universe impel you to test it out creatively and to create it in the testing--far credenza--which in turn validates your testimony of its universality, its true “catholicism. ”

In modern Italian, as in modern English, “credenza” has come to mean a side table where various foods are placed so that they may be sampled before being served. This is not Dante's meaning, of course, but it suggests an allegorical image for the Commedia by recalling the banqueting table of the Convivio (1. 1. 10-13) where he spread out all his philosophical knowledge for the reader to sample. ⁶ In the Sacred Poem his beliefs expand beyond the limited classical fare on his earlier philosophical menu. His banquet is now spread out upon “the table of love” [la mensa d'amor] (Purg. 13. 27), a credenza for the sacramental “bread of angels” [pan de li angeli] (Par. 2. 11). The “outraging” pressures of Dante's expansive new faith bear upon all traditional systems of belief, including the Roman Catholicism of his youth and the Roman philosophy of his political heyday and early exile. Sustained by an anagogic fantasy of his own orthodoxy, he is determined to make belief through make-believe. It is a potentially heretical strategy, and his transgressive reliance on the imagination as well as the intellect to far credenza in the reader will become an issue of major concern among the earliest commentators on the poem. Dante studies takes its start, not surprisingly, from a defence of his orthodoxy.

Reflecting on the outrageousness of his mission to recreate his church and his world in the image of his poem, I have labelled each of the six parts of Dante & the Unorthodox with an Italian infinitive drawn from the rich vocabulary of transgression and transcendence in the Commedia. Each infinitive is a compound of the prefix tra- or its variant tras-, from the Latin preposition trans signifying “over” or “across”, plus a root verb denoting a crossover movement or a crucial change of state.

Part 1 (Trapassar) “steps over” the threshold separating the living from the dead by following Dante into the Inferno to reflect on his initial encounters with the Unorthodox. Part 2 (Trasmutar) examines how the Damned “change over” from one shape to another to reveal the moral and psychosexual effects of their unorthodoxy. Part 3 (Trasumanar) follows Dante's struggle “to pass beyond the human” by considering Purgatory and Paradise as controversial zones where the prevailing orthodoxy of the Roman Church is both sustained and challenged by the souls in Gods favour.

Though theological source-studies of trasumanar have been done by Singleton, Freccero, and, most recently, Botterill, ⁷ the transgressive implications of this most famous of Dante's tra- verbs have yet to be considered. Since the poet audaciously invented trasumanar to express the newness of his own unique experience in entering into all ten spheres of Paradise, it might well mean more than the traditional anagogic gloss suggests (i. e. , “divinization of fallen human nature during beatification”). Why construe it only as a synonym for various Latin theological terms relating to mystical experiences recorded in the Bible? Its significance must exceed the meaning of St. Paul's “being caught up”, for instance, since the Apostle only experienced the mysteries of the third heaven. Reflecting on Dante's Ovidian as well as Bernardian fascination with the visionary presence of “our image” [la nostra effige] (Par. 33. 131) in the second circle of the Trinity, I suggest in part 3 that trasumanar might also mean the “carrying over of the human into the divine”--a distinctively cosmopoetic as well as incarnational transgression of the pagan ontological divide between humanity and divinity.

Part 4 (Traslatar) “translates” Dante both literally and figuratively by considering how the resonance of the Sacred Poem “carries across” the language barrier between Italian and English and across the centuries between the medieval and modern periods. Just as the spirits in the Heavenly Eagle look back to David, “the singer of the Holy Ghost, who bore the ark about from town to town” [il cantor de lo Spirito Santo, / che l'arca traslatò di villa in villa] (Par. 20. 38-9), so the authors in part 4 look back to Ezra Pound, the singer of The Cantos, who bore “Dantescan Light” from town to town in America and Europe during his long unorthodox career. Dante and Pound combine their influences in part 5 (Tralucere), which “projects light across” the chasm between the verbal and visual arts to reveal the impact of the Commedia and The Cantos on filmmaking in the second half of the twentieth century. Implicit in Dante's luminous journey through Paradise is an aesthetic adaptation to the divine delight in spilling over or bursting through all measures of beauty and wisdom. In light of this, part 6 (Trasmodar) “exceeds the limits” of text by passing entirely into the domain of the visual arts to contemplate the Dantean origins of the interarts rivalry in post-medieval aesthetics. .. .

NOTES:

6. Dante's word for “table” in this introductory passage is mensa. Though the food we are to feast upon is philosophical, he describes the table as “blessed” [beata] (Conv. 1. 1. 10) because those who are invited to dine at the banquet are eager to attain the beata vita or “happy life. ”

7. See the gloss on Par. 1. 70 in Singleton (1975), 18; Freccero (1986), 20920; and the extensive discussion of Bernard's comparable term deificari in chapter 6 of Botterill (1994).

From PART I TRAPASSAR Dante's Limbo: At the Margins of Orthodoxy by Amilcare A. Iannucci

Within Dante's Limbo a separate area is reserved for the great-hearted pagans of the past, the magnanimi, who live in a “noble castle” [nobile castello] (Inf. 4. 106) illuminated by a fire which “wins out” against the prevailing darkness of Hell [un foco / ch'emisperio di tenebre vincia] (Inf. 4. 68-9). Surrounding the castle for defence are “lofty walls” and a “fair stream” [alte mura. .. bel fiumicello] (Inf. 4. 107-8). Within, “on a meadow of green flowering plants” [in prato di fresca verdura] (Inf. 4. 111), these same magnanimi, their faces “grave” and their speech “gentle” and infrequent [con occhi tardi e gravi. .. parlavan rado, con voci soavi] (Inf. 4. 112-14), are left free to discuss their affairs and to pursue the intellectual values they espoused while alive.

The above picture of Limbo, although possessed of great poetic beauty and intensity, nevertheless caused from a theological perspective deep shock and embarrassment to Dante's early commentators, as Pietro di Dante, Guido da Pisa, and Boccaccio attest. ² They realized how utterly unorthodox Dante's Limbo was and tried to defend him by maintaining that he was speaking poetically and not theologically, as Guido da Pisa explicitly states. ³ Moreover, they also tried to distance themselves from Dante's unorthodox portrayal of Limbo by pledging their allegiance to the true Faith. The Church, too, reacted to Dante's dangerous theological readings, ⁴ and in a far less understanding manner: provincial chapters repeatedly banned Dante's Commedia from their curricula, as the Dominicans did in 1335. ⁵

Perhaps the most insightful theological condemnation of Dante's theology of Limbo is provided by the fifteenth-century churchman, St. Antoninus. ⁶ A Dominican scholar of the Pierozzi family of Florence and a distinguished ecclesiastic who rose to the rank of adjutor of the Rota, Antoninus (1389-1459) was named Archbishop of Florence in 1446 by Pope Eugenius IV on the suggestion of Antoninus's former fellow classmate, Fra Angelico. A pastoral bishop of the top sort, Antoninus was also a most prolific writer. Among his many works are handbooks for confessors such as the Confessionale and the Medicine of the Soul; a guide for penitents, the Mirror of Conscience; a short spiritual treatise entitled a Guide to Good Living; and a compendium of moral theology, the Summa theologiae moralis. But the work of most significance for Dante's portrayal of Limbo is the Chronicon. Composed sometime between 1440 and 1459, this immensely popular work--it was reprinted seventeen times between 1484 and 1586--contains a veritable history of the world in which both sin and virtue are key players.

Here Antoninus not only speaks of Dante's political turmoil and the reasons for it, but also takes Dante to task for his theological rendering of Limbo, a rendering which for Antoninus is dangerously unorthodox because it cannot be defended by an appeal to Dante's poetic licence. Since the Commedia was written for and read by the vernacular masses, an audience, therefore, who were theologically unsophisticated (Antoninus uses the uncharitable term idiotis [idiots]), ⁷ they were likely to be led away from the articles of the true Faith by Dante's version of Limbo. ⁸

What, then, is the basis of all this theological concern centring on Dante's Limbo, especially that of Antoninus? Before addressing (for the purpose of answering) the theological objections of the goodly Archbishop, it is first of all necessary to review the orthodox picture of Limbo held by theologians of Dante's time and to explore how Dante's depiction of Limbo did or did not conform to it.

NOTES:

2. Both Pietro (gloss to Inf. 4. 1) and Guido (gloss to Inf. 4. 79) ascribe Dante's novel portrayal of Limbo to poetic licence while Boccaccio (Esposizione allegorica, scs. 16-49), after noting the level of criticism provoked by Limbo's lack of orthodoxy and attempting a weak defence in its support, ends by pledging his allegiance to the truth of the Catholic Faith concerning the doctrine of Limbo.

3. Guido da Pisa, gloss to Inf. 4. 79.

4. Equally suspect in the eyes of the Church were the political views of Dante as expressed in the Monarchia. Cf. Vernani's Tractatus de reprobatione compositae a Dante.

5. See Kaeppeli and Dondaine (1941), 286. Cf. Foster (1977), 65.

6. On Antoninus, see Ricci (1970). The best sources for his life are Walker (1933), Jarrett (1914), and Castiglione (1680).

7. The word idiotae is a technical term to describe the illiterate or illitterati. Cf. Ahern (1997), 217-18.

8. Cf. Chronicon, Part 3, tit. 21, chap. 5, para. 2, c. 306, 2b.

Excerpt from Detecting Canada: Essays on Canadian Crime Fiction, Television, and Film edited by Jeannette Sloniowski and Marilyn Rose

From the Introduction

[T]his book represents, we hope, the beginning of more concentrated scholarly engagement with this particular field in Canadian popular narrative. The time seems right, especially given the potentialities of the increasingly rich electronic “archives” that characterize the Internet at present. Not only are books, television, and film increasingly available through online vendors such as chapters. indigo. ca and amazon. ca, but scholarly sleuths—many of them graduate students in our flourishing programs in popular culture in Canada—are now able to access a great deal of early Canadian crime writing directly online. .. .

Because crime writing is part of Canadian mass culture, then, it is to be expected that its iterations in the form of novels, films, and television will reflect certain overarching aspects of a Canadian national imaginary that reinforce national themes and stereotypes that permeate the popular media. The first of these is undoubtedly a preoccupation with law and order, which reflects the long- standing notion that Canada was founded on an ethic of “peace, order, and good government. ”. ..

All of this having been said—and in light of our opening comments about the size of the body of Canadian crime fiction that now exists and the fact that a single collection cannot possibly address its fullness and potential—Detecting Canada seeks to make available a body of critical commentary on a Canadian genre that, while vital and recognized in terms of sales and by book awards, has had little attention paid to its history and its accomplishments as a popular genre. .. .

Together this collection of essays presents a wide range of topics and approaches to Canadian crime fiction and seeks as a collection to shed light on this under-investigated Canadian genre in its various guises and modes. Our goal has been to start the ball rolling and to encourage others to attend critically to the development of this capacious and flexible genre as a way of expressing—and at times contending with—the complex national imaginary within which we continue to construe and negotiate our communal existence.

From Chapter 1 Coca-Colonials Write Back: Localizing the Global in Canadian Crime Fiction by Beryl Langer

Canadian crime fiction is particularly rich in strategic potential given its “realist” codes and the importance of “law and order” in the discursive formation of Canadian difference—remember we are in the realm of myth here, not the actual social formation that has its share of crime, violence, and killers whose bizarre acts of creative sadism equal any in the world. .. .

The popularity of crime fiction in the 1980s and 1990s, and the emergence of regional, feminist, and national variants on the American hard-boiled genre, is in that sense not surprising. For Canadian nationalists, this general sense of fin-de-siècle risk is compounded by anxiety about national survival, generated by separatist pressure from within and the permeability of the U. S. —Canadian border—a mere line on the map, which offers no protection against “pollution” from the south, which, whether in the form of acid rain or crime and violence, will gradually obliterate Canadian difference altogether.