Reading Political Hope: Temporal And Historical Modelling In Contemporary Canadian Fiction

Abstract

<p> This dissertation examines explicit and implicit conceptualizations of time and history in four contemporary Canadian novels: Allan Donaldson's Maclean, Joy Kogawa's Obasan, Margaret Laurence's The Diviners, and Lee Maracle's Daughters are Forever. Performing close textual analysis from a posture of 'deliberate empathy,' the author identifies several key textual devices and concepts that signal the texts' alternate ideas about time and history. These include temporal simultaneity, historical multiplicity, and the presence of the past. Drawing on critical work from fields including literary theory, globalization and cultural studies, indigenous studies and anthropology, the author investigates the political significance of the texts' different historical and temporal models. She argues that the way individuals and cultures understand time and history bears significant influence on the ways in which they understand their ethical relationships with and responsibility toward the world around them. The dissertation closes with a call for further engagement with questions of temporality and for continued efforts to link pedagogical activity to struggles for human rights. </p>