In Encounters on Contested Lands, Julie Burelle employs a performance studies lens to examine how instances of Indigenous self-representation in Québec challenge the national and identity discourses of the French Québécois de souche—the French-speaking descendants of white European settlers who understand themselves to be settlers no more but rather colonized and rightfully belonging to the territory of Québec. Analyzing a wide variety of performances, Burelle brings together the theater of Alexis Martin and the film L'Empreinte, which repositions the French Québécois de souche as métis, with protest marches led by Innu activists; the Indigenous company Ondinnok's theater of repatriation; the films of Yves Sioui Durand, Alanis Obomsawin, and the Wapikoni Mobile project; and the visual work of Nadia Myre. These performances, Burelle argues, challenge received definitions of sovereignty and articulate new ones while proposing to the province and, more specifically, to the French Québécois de souche, that there are alternative ways to imagine Québec's future and remember its past. The performances insist on Québec's contested nature and reframe it as animated by competing sovereignties. Together they reveal how the "colonial present tense" and "tense colonial present" operate in conjunction as they work to imagine an alternative future predicated on decolonization. Encounters on Contested Lands engages with theater and performance studies while making unique and needed contributions to Québec and Canadian studies, as well as to Indigenous and settler-colonial studies.
In Encounters on Contested Lands, Julie Burelle employs a performance studies lens to examine how instances of Indigenous self-representation in Québec challenge the national and identity discourses of the French Québécois de souche—the French-speaking descendants of white European settlers who understand themselves to be settlers no more but rather colonized and rightfully belonging to the territory of Québec. Analyzing a wide variety of performances, Burelle brings together the theater of Alexis Martin and the film L'Empreinte, which repositions the French Québécois de souche as métis, with protest marches led by Innu activists; the Indigenous company Ondinnok's theater of repatriation; the films of Yves Sioui Durand, Alanis Obomsawin, and the Wapikoni Mobile project; and the visual work of Nadia Myre. These performances, Burelle argues, challenge received definitions of sovereignty and articulate new ones while proposing to the province and, more specifically, to the French Québécois de souche, that there are alternative ways to imagine Québec's future and remember its past. The performances insist on Québec's contested nature and reframe it as animated by competing sovereignties. Together they reveal how the "colonial present tense" and "tense colonial present" operate in conjunction as they work to imagine an alternative future predicated on decolonization. Encounters on Contested Lands engages with theater and performance studies while making unique and needed contributions to Québec and Canadian studies, as well as to Indigenous and settler-colonial studies.
Public spectacles, as many scholars argue, perform, shape and solidify a given nation's imagined community, celebrating its perceived commonality, while obscuring elements that might threaten its cohesiveness. For settler communities that are predicated on the erasure of indigeneity and its replacement with settlers, spectacles of nation-ness often coalesce in performances that (re)erase the indigenous "other" whose presence challenges settler legitimacy. Encounters on Contested Lands focuses on spectacles of First Nations cultural identity, sovereignty, and nationhood in the particular context of Quebec, a settler community whose own minority discourse and national aspirations vis-à-vis Canada have monopolized center stage. Encounters examines how Quebec's imagined community relies on what Tuck and Yang call "settler's moves to innocence", that is on the province deploying its status as a cultural and linguistic minority within Canada in order to obscure its own ongoing settler colonial relationship with the eleven First Nations whose sovereignty predates that of Quebec and threatens the coherence of its national narrative. Quebec has analogized its minority status with the oppression of First Nations peoples, problematically positioning the Quebecois as allies in a common decolonization struggle against Canada. This dissertation's intervention is two-fold : First, Encounters examines performances stemming from the francophone community that actively imagine and stage the nation of Quebec, tracing how these works reify Quebec's moves to innocence, and erase the contradictions within its minority discourse. Secondly, Encounters focuses on performances by First Nations artists and activists that interrupt, subvert, and critique spectacles of erasure in Quebec's public sphere, and thus, challenge the settler colonialism that subtends the province's national project. Examining these missed, colliding, or violent encounters between Quebec and First Nations' spectacles of nation-ness, this dissertation meditates on the seemingly irreconcilable divide between these two communities. Drawing from the theatrical work of Alexis Martin and Ondinnok, from films by Alanis Obomsawin and Yves Sioui Durand, from Nadia Myre's visual work, and the Marche Amun's protest march, this dissertation reflects on the multiple sites of resistance that animate First Nations' decolonizing struggle in Quebec, and meditate on the dissonance at work in Quebec's national project.
Strawberries are big business in California. They are the sixth‐highest‐grossing crop in the state, which produces 88 percent of the nation’s favorite berry. Yet the industry is often criticized for its backbreaking labor conditions and dependence on highly toxic soil fumigants used to control fungal pathogens and other soilborne pests. In Wilted, Julie Guthman tells the story of how the strawberry industry came to rely on soil fumigants, and how that reliance reverberated throughout the rest of the fruit’s production system. The particular conditions of plants, soils, chemicals, climate, and laboring bodies that once made strawberry production so lucrative in the Golden State have now changed and become a set of related threats that jeopardize the future of the industry.
During a time of uncertainty over collective identity and social transformation, Quebec novels started getting sick – after 1940, the number of narratives about illness, disease, and sick characters intensified. For the last seventy years, generations of authors have turned to medically oriented stories to represent day to day life and political turmoil. In Curative Illnesses, Julie Robert investigates how the theme of sickness is woven into literature and gauges its effect on depictions of Quebec’s national identity. Challenging the legitimacy of illness as a metaphor for the nation, Robert contests interpretations of illness-related literature that have presented Quebec itself as ailing. Through re-examinations of Quebec novels, Curative Illnesses shatters the illusion of congruency between the nation and the body, countering assumptions about nationwide weakness and victimization. For Quebec in particular, these assumptions have greater implications, because the separatist movement, policies of interculturalism, and majority language rights revolve around protecting and defending Québécois society and its cultural values. Robert skilfully demonstrates a more nuanced view of illness through a series of analyses focusing on works of literature from some of Quebec’s most renowned novelists, including Gabrielle Roy, André Langevin, Denis Lord, Hubert Aquin, Jacques Godbout, Pierre Billon, and Anne Bernard. Using an interdisciplinary approach that engages with nationalism, postcolonial studies, literature, rhetoric, and the medical humanities, Curative Illnesses explores how moving beyond earlier diagnoses offers new insights into nationhood.
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