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Social Science General

Weaving a Canadian Allegory

Anonymous Writing, Personal Reading

by (author) Loretta Czernis

Publisher
Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Initial publish date
Dec 1994
Category
General, General, Historiography
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781554582303
    Publish Date
    Dec 2009
    List Price
    $32.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780889208469
    Publish Date
    Dec 2009
    List Price
    $85
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780889202320
    Publish Date
    Dec 1994
    List Price
    $36.99

Classroom Resources

Where to buy it

Out of print

This edition is not currently available in bookstores. Check your local library or search for used copies at Abebooks.

Description

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.

About the author

Loretta Czernis teaches sociology at Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, Quebec.

Loretta Czernis' profile page