The Undiscovered Country

306 Pages·2013·2.097 MB·English

by  Ian Angus

T  h e
U n d i scov e r ed
coU nTry
Cultural Dialectics
series editor: Raphael Foshay
The difference between subject and object slices through subject
as well as through object.
theodore adorno
Cultural Dialectics provides an open arena in which to debate questions of cul-
ture and dialectic — their practices, their theoretical forms, and their relations
to one another and to other spheres and modes of inquiry. Approaches that
draw on any of the following are especially encouraged: continental philoso-
phy, psychoanalysis, the Frankfurt and Birmingham schools of cultural theory,
deconstruction, gender theory, postcoloniality, and interdisciplinarity.
series titles
Northern Love: An Exploration of Canadian Masculinity
Paul Nonnekes
Making Game: An Essay on Hunting, Familiar Things, and the
Strangeness of Being Who One Is
Peter L. Atkinson
Valences of Interdisciplinarity: Theory, Pedagogy, Practice
Edited by Raphael Foshay
Imperfection
Patrick Grant
The Undiscovered Country: Essays in Canadian Intellectual Culture
Ian Angus
T  h e
U n d i scov e r ed
coU nTry
e s says i n
canadian
i nTe llecTU a l
c U lT U r e
i a n an g U s
Copyright © 2013 Ian Angus
Published by AU Press, Athabasca University
1200, 10011 – 109 Street, Edmonton, ab T5j 3s8
isbn 978-1-927356-32-6 (print) 978-1-927356-33-3 (pdf) 978-1-927356-34-0 (epub)
A volume in Cultural Dialectics
issn 1915-836x (print) 1915-8378 (digital)
Cover and interior design by Natalie Olsen, Kisscut Design.
Printed and bound in Canada by Marquis Book Printers.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Angus, Ian H. (Ian Henderson)
The undiscovered country : essays in Canadian intellectual culture / Ian Angus.
(Cultural dialectics, issn 1915-836x)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Issued also in electronic formats.
isbn 978-1-927356-32-6
1. Canada — Intellectual life — 21st century.
2. Canada — Civilization — 21st century — Philosophy.
3. Political culture — Canada.
4. Intellectuals — Canada.
i. Title.
ii. Series: Cultural dialectics
fc95.5.a54 2013   306.0971   c2013-901187-0
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada
Book Fund (cbf) for our publishing activities.
Assistance provided by the Government of Alberta, Alberta Multimedia Development Fund.
This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons licence, Attribution–Noncommer-
cial–No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada: see www.creativecommons.org. The text may be
reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that credit is given to the original author.
To obtain permission for uses beyond those outlined in the Creative Commons licence,
please contact AU Press, Athabasca University, at [email protected].
dedicated to
George Grant, Roman Onufrijchuk, Rowly Lorimer,
Robbie Schwarzwald, Myrna Kostash, and Claude Couture,
in gratitude for helping me find my way in Canadian studies
understood as articulation of the pressing questions through
engagement in one’s own place

conTe nTs
Preface ix
parT i 1 Introduction: The Instituting Polemos of
The English Canadian Culture 3
do minanT
2 Charles Taylor’s Account of Modernity 15
hegelianism
of canadian 3 James Doull and the Philosophic Task of Our Time 31
inTelle cTUal
4 C. B. Macpherson’s Developmental Liberalism 41
life
5 Athens and Jerusalem? Philosophy and Religion
in George Grant’s Thought 49
parT ii 6 Introduction: National Identity as Solidarity 79
is canada
7 Winthrop Pickard Bell on the Idea of a Nation 85
a naTion?
8 Canadian Studies: Retrospect and Prospect 99
9 Gad Horowitz and the Political Culture of
English Canada 121
10 Empire, Border, Place: A Critique of Hardt and
Negri’s Concept of Empire 141
11 The Difference Between Canadian and American
Political Cultures Revisited 161
parT iii 12 Introduction: Philosophy, Culture, Critique 177
locaT ive
13 Social Movements Versus the Global Neoliberal
ThoUghT
Regime 187
14 Continuing Dispossession: Clearances as a
Literary and Philosophical Theme 209
appendix 1 Jean-Philippe Warren, “Are Multiple Nations
the Solution? An Interview with Ian Angus” 227
appendix 2 Bob Hanke, “Conversation on the University:
An Interview with Ian Angus” 245
Notes 269
Publication Credits 287
Index 289
p r e face
The essays collected here develop several themes regarding Canadian
intellectuals and culture. This work is a companion to my two other
books on English Canada.1 It is organized into three parts, focusing
first on critiques of other thinkers, then on critical analyses of English
Canadian political culture,* before closing with a final part consisting
of material written after the two other books that can stand as an
independent articulation of my own views. The text is thus organized
to supplement my own arguments “negatively,” as it were, through cri-
tique rather than positive argumentation in the first two parts, so that
my own position becomes apparent gradually through critical engage-
ment to arrive at the final articulations. Nevertheless, since the essays
and lectures were written separately, they can be read individually by
those with specific interest in one of the topics. In general, they have not
been revised, apart from the correction of errors and small additions or
elisions that reflect the changed context and time of publication. There
is thus some overlap between the essays that could not be avoided. The
introductory chapters to each part, however, include some new material
outlining the unity of the essays in order to clarify the selection and
organization of this collection and, in some cases, making brief refer-
ence to new scholarship.
* It is not always possible to clearly distinguish when one is referring to “English Canada”
and when to “Canada” outright, for reasons that are rooted in the constitution of the
phenomenon itself. Whenever possible, I do so. By “English Canada” I mean that part
of Canada in which the language of ordinary interaction, and therefore most common
cultural activity, is English. No reference whatever to the ethnic or racial origin of the
individuals is meant. By “Canada” I mean the whole political-cultural-state entity, which
comprises the three constituent units of First Nations, the francophone-Québec nation,
and “English Canada”— which may or may not be a nation in the sense of a distinct
people with a common way of life and belief.
ix
Part i begins with a brief sketch of the Hegelian confidence and pro-
gressivism that has dominated Canadian intellectual life. This confidence
is not always the direct object of my critique, but it nearly always suf-
fers at least collateral damage in the critiques of the thinkers addressed.
Part ii focuses on national identity and political culture, including the
role of Canadian studies in these.
My own conception as articulated in Part iii is at once more uto-
pian and more tragic than that of the first two parts. I have thus used as
the title for the collection a phrase taken from one of the most famous
tragic speeches in English-speaking culture: Hamlet’s “To be or not to
be” soliloquy (Act 3, Scene 1, lines 77–83):
Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
A fardel is a pack or a bundle, a burden. For Canadian intellectual culture,
the burden is its origin in empire. It is widely recognized that English
Canadian political culture has focused on community and plurality,
but I argue that this conception contains the risk of becoming simply
apologetic and ideological if it ignores the critique of empire that has
been equally constitutive of its distinctive character. English Canadian
culture is thus caught between its origin in empire and its attempt to
adequately critique that origin. English Canadian intellectual culture
acquits itself well when it consciously articulates the project of throw-
ing off empire and judges critically failures to so do.
We are delayed before this ultimate possibility that the culture holds
out to us as a goal by a fear that is also itself constitutive of the culture:
the fear of death, the fear that what is distinctive about Canadian intellec-
tual culture will not survive and perhaps even should not survive — that
we will be suffused within empire yet again. This fear leads us to bear
the fardel and to slink from confrontation with the ultimate possibility
x Preface