Theorising the anti-nation: George Woodcock,anarchism, and Canadian nationalism

George Woodcock was anarchism's most influential historian and an important public intellectual in Canada. This article focuses on his engagement with Canadian nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s. It argues that a ‘philosophical anarchism’ was at the heart of his intellectual project, and this informed his reading of Canadian cultural development and subsequent political challenge to Pierre Elliott Trudeau's civic nationalism. Woodcock decoupled the concepts of ‘nation’ and ‘state’ in order to develop a radically different model for Canada—the ‘anti-nation’—defined by regionalism, federalism and direct democracy. His reading of Canada's cultural history supporting this position was therefore part of a strategy to repurpose nationalist rhetoric towards anti-state ends.     

George Woodcock and the Doukhobors: peasant radicalism,anarchism, and the Canadian state

For the British-Canadian writer and intellectual George Woodcock, the Doukhobors – a persecuted radical Christian sect, many members of which emigrated from Russia to Canada at the turn of the twentieth century – were a continual source of fascination. A cause célèbre for a host of nineteenth-century thinkers, including Leo Tolstoy and Peter Kropotkin, the Doukhobors were frequently portrayed as the exemplars of the viewer’s particular ideological beliefs. The present article examines Woodcock’s shifting interpretation of the Doukhobors, mapped onto the development of an intellectual career that saw him emerge as a leading anarchist thinker, and his broader transition from a British writer to a Canadian public intellectual. Where once he saw the Doukhobors representing anarchism in action, as his politics matured his view of the sect became more complex. Rather than living anarchists, he came to see the Doukhobors’ experience as a powerful reminder of the forces of assimilation at work in modern democracies that threatened the liberties of dissenters. Reflecting Woodcock’s revised anarchist politics, the Doukhobors’ story now became a key component of an intellectual vision that cast a probing light on Canadian history and Canadian cultural politics.     

Continental Drift: Negotiating Male Performance in Canadian and American Cinema from the Late Sixties

Michel Brault's Entre la mer et l'eau douce (1967), one of the most accomplished feature films of the Quiet Revolution period, follows the journey of singer-songwriter Claude Fournier from the Charlevoix region to Montreal, where he drifts through a series of marginal jobs and love relationships before returning, disappointed, to his rural village. A portrait of “in-betweenness” in terms of identity, space and time, Brault's film tells the story of Quebec's increasing urbanization and of a people's collective entry into modernity, yet has received much less critical attention than other Quiet Revolution classics such as [Agrave] tout prendre and Le chat dans le sac. This article proposes a reading of this film that recognizes its importance as a key cinematic stepping stone in the Quebec national project, but also places it within a larger context of “coming-to-the-city” narratives. How does comparing Entre la mer et l'eau douce to English-Canadian and American classics which tackle similar themes (i.e., Goin' Down the Road, 1970; Midnight Cowboy, 1969) enable a larger discussion of the representation and appropriation of space, place and movement in the North America imaginary and Quebec's place therein?     

Exploring the City in the Cinema of Bahram Beyzaie

This article explores five of Bahram Beyzaie's urban films over the last four decades to study their critique of the process of modernization and social changes that have taken place in Iran. These include The Journey (Safar, 1972), The Crow (Kalagh, 1977), Maybe Some Other Time (Shayad Vaqti Digar, 1987), Killing Mad Dogs (Sag Koshi, 2001) and When We Are All Asleep (Vaqti Hame Khabim, 2009). It examines the impact of modernization on the architecture and landscape of the city and consequently on the local community. It then studies the increasing complexity of ascertaining the real and unreal within the city. Finally, it looks at the changing values, the fears and threats within the city and the impact these have on its inhabitants, particularly women and their movement within the city.     

The Economic Geographies of the Outer City: Industrial Dynamics and Imaginary Spaces of Location in Copenhagen

The paper focuses on the changing economic geographies of the outer city of Copenhagen. The outer city is not a well-defined place but can be understood as a set of processes transforming the urban economic landscape outside the built-up area. Several central and interrelated economic processes transform the outer city. The paper examines the changing industrial dynamics and location spaces within the framework of geographical proximity and relation propinquity in order to examine the social and cultural embeddedness of location. Imaginary spaces of location are the social constructs of the firm (of the interviewee representing the firm). They are representations of the perception, experience and interpretation of the location of the firm. The imaginary spaces of firms in the outer city are different from those of the firms in the built-up area, and a survey points to the fact that multiple rationalities are important in order to understand industrial location.     

光影中的民族认同--海外华侨与早期中国电影的发展与传播

论文考察了归国华侨与早期中国电影业发展的密切联系和华侨在中国电影海外传播中的积极作用。在近代中国国产电影的发展历程中,华侨在技术、设备、人才等方面发挥着重要的先导作用。一方面,在中国电影的起步阶段,一批海外华侨回国创办电影公司或投资参与电影制作,推动了中国早期电影的发展。另一方面,侨居海外的华侨亦在当地积极支持国产电影,建立了国产电影的发行放映体系、拍摄突出中国文化的华语电影。民族认同让海外华侨积极推动早期中国电影的发展,使中国电影不断壮大,而国产电影的传播又进一步增强了海外华侨的民族认同感。