The Politics Of Othering In The United States And Canada

This book analyses the politics of othering in the USA and Canada from the nineteenth century to the present day. It outlines the basis in human behaviour for ‘disliking the unlike’, which can take the form of ethnocentrism, racism and xenophobia, and shows how politicians take advantage of this human tendency. Seven case studies explore the use of political othering towards minority groups: Indigenous peoples, Jews, Japanese, those with left-wing views, LGBTQ individuals, Blacks, and Muslims. The book argues that prior to World War II, and with the significant exception of Blacks, the politics of othering was stronger in Canada than in the USA. After World War II, the situation reversed and the politics of othering was practiced more in the USA than in Canada. Lastly, the book explains how public policy and international issues prompted this change, discusses future trends in political othering, and offers ideas for promoting inclusion over othering.

These feminist Marxist and anti-racist essays speak to important political issues. Though they begin from experiences of non-white people living in Canada, they provide a critical theoretical perspective capable of exploring similar issues in other western and also third world countries. This reading of 'difference' includes but extends beyond the cultural and the discursive into political economy, state, and ideology. It cuts through conventional paradigms of current debates on multiculturalism. In particular, these essays take up the notion of 'Canada' - as the nation and the state - as an unsettled ground of contested hegemonies. They particularly draw attention to how the state of Canada is an unfinished one, and how the discourse of culture helps it to advance the legitimation claim which is needed by any state, especially one arising in a colonial context, with unsolved nationality problems. The myth of the 'two founding peoples', anglos and francophones, has always conveniently ignored the reality of First Nations. who may have a history of being indentured and politically marginalised and only begin struggling for political enfranchisement in their new homeland.

This book takes the reader through a genealogical embodied journey, explaining how our historical context, through various expressions of language, culture, knowledge, pedagogy, and power, has created and perpetuated oppression of marginalised identities throughout history. The volume is, in essence, a social justice initiative in that it shines a spotlight on elitist forms of knowledge, and their attached privileged protectors. As such, the reader will unavoidably reflect on their own pre-conceived meanings and culturally inherent notions while engaging with these pages, and in so doing open a third space where new forms of knowledge that may transcend time and space can evolve into endless possibilities. It is these possibilities of expanding the nuanced meanings of evolving knowledge, fluid lifestyles, and of a dynamic connection to humanity and God, which make this book contextually relevant in our post-modern landscape. It un-situates philosophies which have traditionally been unknowingly situated, and, in so doing, propels the reader to re-interpret discourse and recreate taken-for-granted “universal truths.”

Theories of liberal multiculturalism have come to dominate debates about identity and difference politics in contemporary western political theory. Identity/Difference Politics offers a nuanced critique of these debates by switching the focus from culture to power. Issues of power are examined through accounts of meaning-making – those processes through which meanings of difference are produced, organized, and regulated. Other forms of identity/difference such as whiteness, ableism, gender, and heteronormativity establish the analytic and normative value of Dhamoon’s alternative theoretical framework, and reveal that an exclusive preoccupation with culture can dissolve into essentialism – which too often provides a rationale for state regulation of groups deemed to be too different.

In "Politics in North America: Redefining Continental Relations," prominent authors from Canada, the United States, and Mexico explore the politics of redefining the institutional, economic, geographic, and cultural boundaries of North America.

The 49th parallel has long held a symbolic importance to Canadian cultural nationalists as a strong, though permeable, border. But in contemporary Canadian culture, the border has multiple meanings, and imbalances of cultural power occur both across the Canada-US border as well as within Canada. Discrepant Parallels examines divergent relationships to, and investments in, the Canada-US border in a variety of media, such as travel writing, fiction, poetry, drama, and television. Tracing cultural production in Canada since the 1980s through the periods of FTA and NAFTA negotiations, and into the current, post-9/11 context, Gillian Roberts grapples with the border's changing relevance to Canadian nationalist, Indigenous, African Canadian, and Latin American perspectives. Drawing on Kant and Derrida, she theorizes the 49th parallel to account for the imbalance of cultural, political, and economic power between the two countries, as well as the current challenges to dominant definitions of Canadianness. Focusing on a border that is often overshadowed by the contentious US-Mexico divide, Discrepant Parallels analyzes the desire to establish Canadian-American sameness and difference from a multitude of perspectives, as well as its implications for how Canada is represented within and outside its national borders.

What is race and why does it matter? Why does the presence of Others make us so afraid? America’s foremost novelist reflects on themes that preoccupy her work and dominate politics: race, fear, borders, mass movement of peoples, desire for belonging. Ta-Nehisi Coates provides a foreword to Toni Morrison’s most personal work of nonfiction to date.