Archaeologies of an Uncertain Future: Recent Generations of Canadian Women WritingAn apocalyptic vision of planetary self-destruction provided the context for many late twentieth-century narratives. Women writers from Quebec and English Canada, including Margaret Atwood, Madeleine Ouellette-Michalska, Madeleine Gagnon, Betsy Warland, Marie-Claire Blais, and Nicole Brossard, redefined their relationship to time and narrative in order to tell a different, perhaps more hopeful, story. Using "archaeology" as a trope and a methodology, Karen McPherson's "critical excavations" of these women's writings pose questions about loss and mourning, survival and witnessing, devastation and writing, remembering and imagining. |
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Page xi
... question. I thereafter indicate whenever I have modified these translations. In all other cases, translations from the French are my own. This page intentionally left blank Abbreviations acd as ba ds Acknowledgments xi.
... question. I thereafter indicate whenever I have modified these translations. In all other cases, translations from the French are my own. This page intentionally left blank Abbreviations acd as ba ds Acknowledgments xi.
Page xvii
... question the signs ... I had to touch the Tables of the Law that had held me to my words. I had to inventory their rules, exorcise their rumblings. At dawn, I ventured towards the past. The archaeology of the future was beginning.] In ...
... question the signs ... I had to touch the Tables of the Law that had held me to my words. I had to inventory their rules, exorcise their rumblings. At dawn, I ventured towards the past. The archaeology of the future was beginning.] In ...
Page 3
... the end of a hundred-year span? The question of “the meaning of the century” was perhaps particularly salient because one hundred years is generally considered the outer limit of an Introduction: Surviving the Century.
... the end of a hundred-year span? The question of “the meaning of the century” was perhaps particularly salient because one hundred years is generally considered the outer limit of an Introduction: Surviving the Century.
Page 7
... question the apocalypse script, do so in the name of salvaging something, reconfiguring the ending in such a way as to be able to imagine a feminist future.35 Their versions of apocalypse thus in some ways resemble Louky Bersianik's ...
... question the apocalypse script, do so in the name of salvaging something, reconfiguring the ending in such a way as to be able to imagine a feminist future.35 Their versions of apocalypse thus in some ways resemble Louky Bersianik's ...
Page 8
... question of survival is posed in provocative and, I would contend, distinctly gender-inflected ways. Writing at the end of the twentieth century is, for these women, writing (about/into) the future. sHIFTING GROUND Cette subversion, ce ...
... question of survival is posed in provocative and, I would contend, distinctly gender-inflected ways. Writing at the end of the twentieth century is, for these women, writing (about/into) the future. sHIFTING GROUND Cette subversion, ce ...
Contents
3 | |
1 The Language of Grief | 32 |
2 Memory Works | 58 |
3 Precarious Thresholds | 116 |
4 Thinking the Future | 167 |
5 Today and Tomorrow | 205 |
Notes | 225 |
Bibliography | 275 |
Index | 289 |
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Archaeologies of an Uncertain Future: Recent Generations of Canadian Women ... Karen S. McPherson No preview available - 2006 |
Common terms and phrases
associated Augustino Baroque d’aube bear become beginning Blais’s body brings Brossard c’est chapter child close comes connection continue course Cybil daughter death describes desire earlier Emma emphasis event experience fact feel femmes fiction figure final future give grief hold hope human idea imagination important intime Jakob kind language legacy living look loss lost marked meaning mémoire memory mort mother mourning move Naomi narrative narrator never night notes novel Obasan offers once one’s passage past perhaps possible present question Radclyffe Hall reading recalls reference reflects relationship remember says scene seems sense silence space speak story suggests takes telling thought tion tout translation modified trauma turn vision voice witness woman women writing