back to article
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
CANADA: STAGES
OF DEVELOPMENT
1) Seminal event: confrontation with the wilderness
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).
|