2000
First Published
4.03
Average Rating
182
Number of Pages
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. More recently, it has also ignored the entrance of non-European immigrants who may have a history of being indentured and politically marginalised and only begin struggling for political enfranchisement in their new homeland.
Avg Rating
4.03
Number of Ratings
38
5 STARS
26%
4 STARS
53%
3 STARS
18%
2 STARS
3%
1 STARS
0%
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Author
Himani Bannerji
Author · 3 books
Himani Bannerji is a Bengali–Canadian writer, sociologist, and philosopher from Kolkata, West Bengal, India. She teaches in the Department of Sociology, the Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought, and the Graduate Programme in Women's Studies at York University, Canada. She is also known for her activist work and poetry. She received her B.A. and M.A. in English from Visva-Bharati University and Jadavpur University respectively, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. Bannerji works in the areas of Marxist, feminist and anti-racist theory. She is especially focused on reading colonial discourse through Karl Marx's concept of ideology, and putting together a reflexive analysis of gender, race and class. Bannerji also does much lecturing about the Gaze and othering and silencing of women who are marginalized.
