Weaving a Canadian Allegory: Anonymous Writing, Personal Reading

by Loretta Czernis

Overview

Loretta Czernis applies her sociological training in document analysis to study one government prescription for what ails Canadians. The Report of the Task Force on Canadian Unity rewrote Canada by reinventing patriotism, essentially inviting Canadians to imagine a new Canada. The Report 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 Report occurs on two levels: reading technically, she examines the Report’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. Weaving a Canadian Allegory will be of special interest to Canadianists, sociologists and to those involved in cultural, political and textual studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781554582303
Publisher:	Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Publication date:	12/01/2009
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	152
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Loretta Czernis teaches Sociology at Bishop’s Universityin Lennoxville, Quebec.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents for
Weaving a Canadian Allegory: Anonymous Writing, Personal Reading by Loretta Czernis

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction

1. Concerning Contexture

2. Reading and Projection

3. Confederation and the Body of Conflict

4. Writing a Body of Unity: Rewriting “Canada and the Search for Unity”

5. Mytho-history to Allegory: Tomorrow’s Unity as Patriot’s Progress

6. Misreading Nietzche, Rewriting Bloom

Afterword

Appendix: Outlining The Report of the Task Force on Canadian Unity

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

Czernis (sociology, Bishop's U.) analyzes the Report of the Task Force on Canadian Unity, examining the Report's anonymous writing style that asks readers to imitate its own conclusions and looking at the document as a historical allegory. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews