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APPENDIX 1: THE CANADIAN SENSE OF BEING-IN-THE-WORLD*

PROPOSITIONS
1) Being-in-the-world is conceptualized in binary terms
2) The most basic binary (Levi-Strauss notwithstanding) is Self versus Other
3) Both the content of and the relationship between these terms are variable, and are determined
by the critical historical experience of the group, which is reproduced through culture
4) The most critical Other for people living on a frontier is Nature

Basic binary:
	1st term	relation	2nd term
	Self	<recoil<	NATURE
produces
	interiority
which is coded as
	Feminine

 

2) Secondary operations

a) Picks up additonal self-characteristics (by association) like:

passivity

non-aggression

vulnerability

esp. powerlessness

b) Implies a type antagonist (by opposition) such that

NATURE = Masculine

 

3. Metamorphosis (analogous to the shift in art from container to frame):

Elaborated binary:
	Self	<recoils from<	NATURE	\ linked by the common property of
	feminine		masculine	/ power in opposition to powerlessness

but

Recoil produces dissociation (i.e. conceptual barriers)

Once distanced, nature

a) loses reality

b) becomes abstracted into diffuse otherness

c) becomes amenable to recoding

b) becomes a category, defined by mode of relation rather than a specific content

Thus: we now have aspects of nature on both sides of the fence, depending on how it is coded:

Nature as self	<oppression	Nature as other
	threat management>
garden		wilderness
aesthetic object ("landscape")		primitiveness
or domesticated environment		fate, chaos, death (God?)

We also have aspects of culture on both sides of the fence.

The key is what is and is not controllable.

Culture as other	<oppression,	Culture as other
	threat management>
community		The State
civility		Politics
domesticity, face-to-face interaction		Society
mediating structures (everyday rituals, etiquette)		Religion
personal technology		Impersonal Technology
(tools, houses)		(esp. weapons)
vocation or "job"		Business
art (!)

 

* The foregoing is taken from a handout I prepared for an undergraduate course on Canadian culture. It summarizes the psycho-history of Canadian propensities in self-representation. A more detailed version of the story may be found in The Wacousta Syndrome (see note 8).