Law, Rhetoric and Irony in the Formation of Canadian Civil Culture

Law, Rhetoric and Irony in the Formation of Canadian Civil Culture
Author: Michael Dorland
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2002-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780802081193

In Rhetoric, Irony, and Law in the Formation of Canadian Civil Culture, Michael Dorland and Maurice Charland examine how, over the roughly 400-year period since the encounter of First Peoples with Europeans in North America, rhetorical or discursive fields took form in politics and constitution-making, in the formation of a public sphere, and in education and language. The study looks at how these fields changed over time within the French regime, the British regime, and in Canada since 1867, and how they converged through trial and error into a Canadian civil culture. The authors establish a triangulation of fields of discourse formed by law (as a technical discourse system), rhetoric (as a public discourse system), and irony (as a means of accessing the public realm as the key pillars upon which a civil culture in Canada took form) in order to scrutinize the process of creating a civil culture. By presenting case studies ranging from the legal implications of the transition from French to English law to the continued importance of the Louis Riel case and trial, the authors provide detailed analyses of how communication practices form a common institutional culture. As scholars of communication and rhetoric, Dorland and Charland have written a challenging examination of the history of Canadian governance and the central role played by legal and other discourses in the formation of civil culture.

Global Realignments and the Canadian Nation in the Third Millennium

Global Realignments and the Canadian Nation in the Third Millennium
Author: Karin Ikas
Publisher: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2010
Genre: History
ISBN: 9783447061346

With aggravating global realignments, the dynamics and contradictions of a world (risk) society are looming ahead in the unfolding Third Millennium while globalization is gaining further steam. To this bears witness a potpourri of often frightening geopolitical, social, cultural, economic, demographic, ecological and other changes and challenges that gives substantial cause for concern about getting lost in a 'trans-whatever' sea of turmoil, uncertainty and indeterminateness. The resultant current backlash or rather renewed interest in the nation as a collective identity-establishing category is an effort to gain some anchorage in ever more disintegrating times and proves especially those theoreticians wrong for whom the whole concept of the nation has worn off since long. In 16 resourceful essays internationally distinguished Canadian and European experts from a variety of fields take a fresh look at these developments by focussing on one of the most fascinating multicultural and multifaceted nation(-state)s in the world, Canada in the Third Millennium. The topics they discuss include, among others, Canada's difficult dissociation from Europe and the USA; the reframing and reclaiming of the Canadian story; the role of nations within the nation; the efforts to transcend the nation; pending geopolitical and (geo)ecological crises; glocal issues and new wars. Collectively, the entries prove that Canada is a very progressive nation and opens up new perspectives for other collectives currently reassessing their national identities in a global environment. Thus, the book reaches well beyond the study of 'Canada' and will be valuable to academics, professionals, teachers and students of various disciplines coping with the issue at stake as well as the general reader.

Canada's 1960s

Canada's 1960s
Author: Bryan D. Palmer
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 649
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0802099548

Focusing on the major movements and personalities of the time, as well as the lasting influence of the period, Canada's 1960s examines the legacy of this rebellious decade's impact on contemporary notions of Canadian identity.

Essays in the History of Canadian Law

Essays in the History of Canadian Law
Author: George Blaine Baker
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 609
Release: 2013-12-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1442670061

The essays in this volume deal with the legal history of the Province of Quebec, Upper and Lower Canada, and the Province of Canada between the British conquest of 1759 and confederation of the British North America colonies in 1867. The backbone of the modern Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, this geographic area was unified politically for more than half of the period under consideration. As such, four of the papers are set in the geographic cradle of modern Quebec, four treat nineteenth-century Ontario, and the remaining four deal with the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes watershed as a whole. The authors come from disciplines as diverse as history, socio-legal studies, women’s studies, and law. The majority make substantial use of second-language sources in their essays, which shade into intellectual history, social and family history, regulatory history, and political history.

Essays in the History of Canadian Law

Essays in the History of Canadian Law
Author: G. Blaine Baker
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 609
Release: 1981-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1442648155

The essays in this volume deal with the legal history of the Province of Quebec, Upper and Lower Canada, and the Province of Canada between the British conquest of 1759 and confederation of the British North America colonies in 1867. The backbone of the modern Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, this geographic area was unified politically for more than half of the period under consideration. As such, four of the papers are set in the geographic cradle of modern Quebec, four treat nineteenth-century Ontario, and the remaining four deal with the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes watershed as a whole. The authors come from disciplines as diverse as history, socio-legal studies, women's studies, and law. The majority make substantial use of second-language sources in their essays, which shade into intellectual history, social and family history, regulatory history, and political history.

Trans.Can.Lit

Trans.Can.Lit
Author: Smaro Kamboureli
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2009-10-22
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1554587182

The study of Canadian literature—CanLit—has undergone dramatic changes since it became an area of specialization in the 1960s and ’70s. As new global forces in the 1990s undermined its nation-based critical assumptions, its theoretical focus and research methods lost their immediacy. The contributors to Trans.Can.Lit address cultural policy, citizenship, white civility, and the celebrated status of diasporic writers, unabashedly recognizing the imperative to transfigure the disciplinary and institutional frameworks within which Canadian literature is produced, disseminated, studied, taught, and imagined.

Riel's Defence

Riel's Defence
Author: Hans V. Hansen
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2014-06-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0773590471

In 1885, Louis Riel was charged with high treason, found guilty, and consequently executed for his role in Saskatchewan's North-West Rebellion. During his trial, the Métis leader gave two speeches, passionately defending the interests of the Métis in western Canada as well as his own life. Riel's Defence studies these speeches, demonstrating the range of Riel's political and personal concerns. The first and better known of the two speeches addresses the jury, while Riel's second speech - rarely reprinted - addresses the court following his guilty verdict. Both orations have been edited, annotated, and reprinted, and are followed by essays from diverse perspectives including philosophy, law, history, political science, religion, and communication studies. Through the course of their inquiry, contributors come to understand more about Riel's personal character and political thought, as well as his arguments supporting Métis land claims, grievances against the federal government, and his immigration plan for the North-West. Evaluating the rhetorical quality, legal merit, and cultural stakes of his speeches, Riel's Defence reveals the significance of the last public statements made by a man who indelibly shaped Canada’s history by combining his personal vision with a national vision.

Canadian Cultural Studies

Canadian Cultural Studies
Author: Sourayan Mookerjea
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 609
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 082239216X

DIVCanada is situated geographically, historically, and culturally between old empires (Great Britain and France) and a more recent one (the United States), as well as on the terrain of First Nations communities. Poised between historical and metaphorical empires and operating within the conditions of incomplete modernity and economic and cultural dependency, Canada has generated a body of cultural criticism and theory, which offers unique insights into the dynamics of both center and periphery. The reader brings together for the first time in one volume recent writing in Canadian cultural studies and work by significant Canadian cultural analysts of the postwar era. Including essays by anglophone, francophone, and First Nations writers, the reader is divided into three parts, the first of which features essays by scholars who helped set the agenda for cultural and social analysis in Canada and remain important to contemporary intellectual formations: Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, and Anthony Wilden in communications theory; Northrop Frye in literary studies; George Grant and Harold Innis in a left-nationalist tradition of critical political economy; Fernand Dumont and Paul-Émile Borduas in Quebecois national and political culture; and Harold Cardinal in native studies. The volume’s second section showcases work in which contemporary authors address Canada’s problematic and incomplete nationalism; race, difference, and multiculturalism; and modernity and contemporary culture. The final section includes excerpts from federal policy documents that are especially important to Canadians’ conceptions of their social, political, and cultural circumstances. The reader opens with a foreword by Fredric Jameson and concludes with an afterword in which the Quebecois scholar Yves Laberge explores the differences between English-Canadian cultural studies and the prevailing forms of cultural analysis in francophone Canada. Contributors. Ian Angus, Himani Bannerji, Jody Berland, Paul-Émile Borduas, Harold Cardinal, Maurice Charland, Stephen Crocker, Ioan Davies, Fernand Dumont, Kristina Fagan, Gail Faurschou, Len Findlay, Northrop Frye, George Grant, Rick Gruneau, Harold Innis, Fredric Jameson, Yves Laberge, Jocelyn Létourneau, Eva Mackey, Lee Maracle, Marshall McLuhan, Katharyne Mitchell, Sourayan Mookerjea, Kevin Pask, Rob Shields, Will Straw, Imre Szeman, Serra Tinic, David Whitson, Tony Wilden/div

Re-Interpreting Blackstone's Commentaries

Re-Interpreting Blackstone's Commentaries
Author: Wilfrid Prest
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2014-12-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1782254595

This collection explores the remarkable impact and continuing influence of William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, from the work's original publication in the 1760s down to the present. Contributions by cultural and literary scholars, and intellectual and legal historians trace the manner in which this truly seminal text has established its authority well beyond the author's native shores or his own limited lifespan. In the first section, 'Words and Visions', Kathryn Temple, Simon Stern, Cristina S Martinez and Michael Meehan discuss the Commentaries' aesthetic and literary qualities as factors contributing to the work's unique status in Anglo-American legal culture. The second group of essays traces the nature and dimensions of Blackstone's impact in various jurisdictions outside England, namely Quebec (Michel Morin), Louisiana and the United States more generally (John W Cairns and Stephen M Sheppard), North Carolina (John V Orth) and Australasia (Wilfrid Prest). Finally Horst Dippel, Paul Halliday and Ruth Paley examine aspects of Blackstone's influential constitutional and political ideas, while Jessie Allen concludes the volume with a personal account of 'Reading Blackstone in the Twenty-First Century and the Twenty-First Century through Blackstone'. This volume is a sequel to the well-received collection Blackstone and his Commentaries: Biography, Law, History (Hart Publishing, 2009).

The Undiscovered Country

The Undiscovered Country
Author: Ian Henderson Angus
Publisher: Athabasca University Press
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2013
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1927356326

In this sequence of essays, Ian Angus engages with themes of identity, power, and the nation as they emerge in contemporary English Canadian philosophical thought, seeking to prepare the groundwork for a critical theory of neoliberal globalization. The essays are organized into three parts. The opening part offers a nuanced critique of the Hegelian confidence and progressivism that has come to dominate Canadian intellectual life. Through an analysis of the work of several prominent Canadian thinkers, among them Charles Taylor and C. B. Macpherson, Angus suggests that Hegelian frames of reference are inadequate, failing as they do to accommodate the fact of English Canada's continuing indebtedness to empire. The second part focuses on national identity and political culture, including the role of Canadian studies as a discipline, adapting its critical method to Canadian political culture. The first two parts culminate in the positive articulation, in Part 3, of author's own conception, one that is at once more utopian and more tragic than that of the first two parts. Here, Angus develops the concept of locative thought--the thinking of a people who have undergone dispossession, "of a people seeking its place and therefore of a people that has not yet found its place."