Griffiths, N.E.S. From
Migrant to Acadian: A North American Border People 1604-1755
Keough, Willeen. The
Slender Thread: Irish Women on the Southern Avalon, 1750-1860.
Willeen Keough
and Naomi Griffiths offer substantial contributions to the history of what is
now Eastern Canada, focusing on Acadia and the Southern Avalon, respectively.
The research and detail in both monographs shows in these comprehensive
histories. Theoretically, both works are linked by discussions of
liminality—although this is not the particular language that either historian
appears to use.
Griffiths
presents an analysis of the formation of Acadian identity, in the form of a
chronologically arranged critical narrative. While previous historians have
focused on the Acadian deportation and its aftermath, Griffiths bases her
monograph around the period up to the deportation in 1755. She analyses the
Acadians as a people worthy of study in their own right, emphasizing that they
were distinctive as more than a “folk society.”[1]
She also considers the Acadians as an example of the formation of “national”
identity. According to Griffiths, Acadian identity was shaped by their position
as a “border people;” this same position led to their political conflicts with and
subsequent deportation by the British. Tracing Acadian history from initial
settlement in Mi’kmaq territory until the deportation, Griffiths closes
empirical gaps in the history of the Acadians, while illustrating how their
experiences were influenced by their very particular social, economic, and
political local, regional, and trans-Atlantic circumstances. If one is looking
for an empirically comprehensive, well-researched history of the Acadians, it
is hard to find fault with this monograph. It is, however, occasionally hard to
follow Griffiths’ arguments, as the extent of detail can become overwhelming.
Keough’s work is
theoretically more complex. Through a gendered analysis, also informed by
ethnicity and class, Keough considers how women made meaning from their
experiences of immigration and community formation. Keough clearly illustrates
that plebeian Irish Catholic women in the Southern Avalon had a very specific
experience of community building that cannot be summed up as part of an
“amorphous” white settler society.[2]
These women’s economic position was key in affording them power in their homes
and communities, and limiting the scrutiny that they were otherwise subject to
due to their Irish Catholic religion and ethnicity. Keough’s research is
extensive, and very visible in her monograph; readers using an electronic copy
can follow links to some of her primary sources and oral histories. Alongside
her critical discussion of her own methodology, this visibility leaves little
room to scrutinize her empirical findings. Keough’s methodology draws from
several approaches, blending them to access the history of an otherwise nearly
invisible group. Keough employs empiricism and poststructuralism to consider
the “interplay between rhetoric and reality,” and blends oral histories with documentary
evidence, considering women’s experiences as the equivalent of text for
discourse analysis.[3]
Unlike
Griffiths, Keough organizes her monograph thematically; this makes it somewhat
harder to follow changes and developments on the Avalon peninsula, but
elucidates Keough’s arguments and analytical goals. Keough’s main themes of
analysis, in chapters of varying length, include migration and demographics,
the construction of identity through work, women’s relationship to informal
power, the justice system, and various sources of sexual regulation. Her
penultimate chapter considers those women who were not Irish, Catholic, and
plebeian, briefly outlining their situation to show the specificity of the
predominant Irish Catholic plebeian women’s culture and identity in a broader
colonial context. While elite women’s lives were increasingly circumscribed
through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Keough argues that plebeian
women maintained a significant degree of power.
It is in her use
of certain terms that Keough could be criticized. What, for instance, precisely
constitutes “power”? It is surprising, given the depth that Keough provides for
her case studies, that she does not break this down further. Similarly, the
textile metaphor in her title is somewhat perplexing; I found it to be unclear
whether the “thread” was women’s migration and ties to place, or the women
themselves. Similarly, there is no explanation for why the thread is “cast off”
at the beginning of the work, and “cast on” at the end – the exact opposite as
when knitting. More consideration of the theory behind gender, power, and class
would be welcome in a work that is otherwise so transparent.
Liminality plays
into both of these monographs. In Griffiths’ work, this is largely geographic,
or at least geo-political, as the Acadians were situated between the French and
British, New France, Mi’kmaq, and New England, constructing their identity
specifically as a people between many forces. For Keough, this liminality is
between the women’s marginalized position as Irish, Catholic, female, and
working-class, and the power they derive from their economic importance to the
Southern Avalon. Unlike their peers in Ireland, or middle-class women in the
Southern Avalon, these women had a significant degree of economic independence;
though legally subsumed by their husbands, women held purchasing power in their
households and were engaged in trade. Their identities were neither based on
domestic fragility nor on hardship, as they performed physically challenging
labour in local fisheries while being tacit heads of households. Plebeian women
believed that their legal concerns were legitimate, and thus accessed the
justice system and modes of community support.
Keough and
Griffiths both consider how settlers of European origin created identities for
themselves in relation to their other ambiguous or challenging social,
economic, and geopolitical surroundings. Together, they show two approaches to
considering the liminality of specific populations in pre-Confederation Eastern
Canada.
[1]
Griffiths, xvi.
[2]
Keough, 4.
[3]
Keough, 9-10.
Review: Mills,
Sean. The Empire Within: Postcolonial
Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal. Montreal and Kingston:
McGill-Queens University Press, 2010.
In The Empire Within, Sean Mills situates
political activism in Montreal as the result of local and global circumstances
and ideological developments. By exposing the transnational links between
Montreal’s movements and postcolonial thought, Mills presents a compelling
example of locally-focused “entangled” history. In his introduction, Mills
explains how Montreal activists engaged significantly with Third World
anti-colonial theory to conceptualize the struggles of Quebec’s francophone
population. In this section, Mills highlights the contradictions and
ambiguities that framed and complicated Quebeckers’ self-image as a colonized
people. In doing so, he articulates one of his aims, to examine the movement of
theory and people and consider geographically specific interpretations of
theory (7). According to Mills, decolonization as a framework, situated as part
of a global language of dissent, enabled citizens to understand their
oppression and their individual and collective power, yet also entailed many
contradictions that at times mobilized and at times complicated political
activism in Montreal.
Mills presents
roughly chronological chapters outlining the development and application of
postcolonial thought in various facets of Montreal’s political activism. He
begins with an outline of the historical underpinnings of a view of Quebeckers
as a colonized people, showing this to be a twofold product of the 1759
Conquest, followed by profound influences of American imperialism. Quebeckers
drew from these experiences and history, integrating them with global
postcolonial theory to situated themselves as colonized peoples, in a Manichean
binary worldview that divided the colonial world into the colonists and the
colonized, without room for the ambiguities that complicated the position of
francophone Quebeckers in this power relation. While much early historiography
of the 1960s describes this decade as a transformative period in relation to a
static era of the 1950s, in this chapter Mills argues that the 1960s saw
accelerated change, rather than rupture, and challenges the notion of today’s
Quebec as rooted in changes from the 1960s. Mills sees such a view of the 1960s
as not sufficiently cognizant of the past (19-20). Such a view of rupture and
stasis in Quebec history echoes Donald Fyson’s earlier arguments about Lower
Canada,[1]
suggesting a trend towards emphasizing continuities in the periodization of
this province’s history. While Mills does not explicitly carry this argument
through his work, it is implicit in his decision to consider the 1950s and
early 1970s as contiguous with, rather than separate from, his analysis of
1960s Montreal.
Following this
thread, Mills’ next chapter begins by portraying the 1950s as a decade of
“bubbling underground energy” among activists, despite more widespread
experiences of isolation and repression (40). Mills depicts Montreal activism
as it moved into and through the 1960s as spatially significant, arguing that
poor neighbourhoods acted as sites of resistance, while women were active in
the particular spatial context of the private sphere (46, 47). Ultimately, Mills
argues that diverse movements gradually converged in the 1960s, intertwined in
a discussion of Montreal’s relationship to empire (51). The language of
dissent, according to Mills, was critical for this discussion: the Parti Pris
was critical in forming a vocabulary that insisted that alienation was a result
of the material and psychological consequences of colonization.
Problematically, they created this language using pre-existing structures
including a patriarchal worldview, positioning the movement as one of men’s
liberation (51-53). Such rhetoric reappears in Mills’ sixth chapter, where he
mentions McGill professor Stanley Gray using violent gendered language
portraying Quebec’s colonization as “rape”; Mills does not carry a
consideration of Gray’s gendered language any further. Activists’ language was
also problematic through the silences that it entailed; portraying French
Canadians as a colonized people neglected their European ancestry and position
as colonizers as Aboriginal peoples (60). Mills’ analysis here is convincing,
but his presentation of it has some concerning omissions. His emphasis on the
spatial nature of activism in Montreal would be significantly enhanced were he
to include and analyze a map to indicate these geographical movements and
divisions. Similarly, his focus on the language of dissent is undermined by the
absence of any sustained analysis of postcolonial discourse or consideration of
his own language. For instance, Mills refers to “Quebeckers” rather than “Québecois,” and
capitalizes “White,” without analyzing this language use as meaningful.
Mills
subsequently emphasizes the national and international aspects of activism,
showing internationalism as central to this political project. He shows how
Montreal activists drew upon Cuban self-image as “mestizaje” and on the
language of the Black Power movement to metaphorically position Quebeckers as
“negres blancs” (72-73, 74-75). Mills argues that this self-definition had a
political rather than racial meaning, signifying Quebeckers as colonized
peoples, and was appropriative rather than an expression of solidarity (76-77);
it had the effect of rendering Montreal’s own Black and Aboriginal populations
invisible in activist struggles, constructing the city as a place without racial
discrimination (83-84). Mills’ analysis of Michèle Lalonde’s affirmation of
negritude in her poem “Speak White” is the first of several missed
opportunities in his work for a gendered analysis of leadership in Montreal
activism and the production of language. How did Lalonde’s position as a woman
affect her role and prominence in this movement? Given Mills’ argument that the
language of resistance was highly gendered, the absence of an analysis of a
woman’s role in producing language that was central to this movement is
puzzling.
Mills’ next two
chapters consider activism in the Black community and among women,
respectively. Mills portrays the 1960s as a watershed for Black political
thought and organization, positioning Montreal as a major centre for the
convergence of local activists and global movement leaders (95). He situates
Montreal’s Black resistance, particularly the Sir George Williams computer
centre occupation and riots—a reaction to unaddressed racism at the college—in
the context of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements across North America.
Black activism in Montreal was complicated by white francophone Quebeckers
claiming an identity as colonized peoples, and Black activists thus made
efforts to show that these francophones were simultaneously oppressors and
oppressed (115). Mills then turns to the women’s movement, showing how the
women’s movement in Montreal introduced ideas into the public sphere and shaped
the language of opposition (121). This is Mills’ shortest chapter, and one that
could certainly benefit from a consideration of how prominent women in
Montreal’s political activism created, manipulated, and responded to the
language of resistance. In particular, by drawing a sharp division between
Black activism and women’s activism, Mills obscures the intersectionality that
almost certainly influenced activists’ experiences within the movement; how did
activists such as Anne Cools negotiate a dual position of being Black and
female? The Aboriginal women’s movement is another striking absence in Mills’
text; while the thrust of Aboriginal women’s activism occurred in later
decades, Aboriginal women’s resistance became visible during the late 1960s
through the work of Mary Two-Axe Earley, a figure who is entirely absent from Mills’
study. Also troublingly, Mills’ only consideration of activism surrounding
Aboriginal communities is a brief mention of white activists working on behalf
of Aboriginal peoples; there is no mention of resistance that Aboriginal
peoples themselves enacted.
Mills’ sixth
chapter turns to language rights, arguing that the movement for unilingualism
was inextricable from Montreal’s complex, diverse political life (141). The
education system was critical in this movement, which concerned the language of
children’s education and the privileging of McGill as an elite Anglophone
institution. This chapter shows a mix of collaboration and conflict between
groups of activists; while Opération McGill français included Anglophone
activists who challenged the hegemony of their own institution, the movement
against Bill 63 alienated and silenced immigrant voices. Mills’ final two
chapters consider the labour movement, particularly its relations with the Front
de Liberation du Québec (FLQ) and its subsequent emergence as the primary locus
of political activism for the 1970s. Labour activists became radicalized
through a somewhat ambiguous relationship with the FLQ, catalyzed by the
imposition of the War Measures Act. While this was a locally specific
circumstance, Mills highlights how it coincided with global anti-imperialist
politics, using a global language in conjunction with locally developed theory
(189). It is in his eighth chapter that Mills evocatively describes Montreal as
a “laboratory” for conceptions of empire and anti-imperial resistance (191),
where postcolonial thought could be imported or conceived, refined, and
mobilized. This argument is somewhat diluted by the focus on the labour
movement in his conclusion.
By emphasizing
that first-world and third-world histories cannot be “untangled,” Mills engages
with the “histoire croissée” or “entangled history” approach to transnational
history. This engagement is perhaps inadvertent; Mills does not refer to the
historiography that is central to this approach. Mills’ references are
primarily to local, regional, or national historiography and theory; he builds
the transnational links through his own analysis. Historians such as Michael
Werner and Bénédicte Zimmerman[2]
would quite likely endorse Mills’ emphasis on ambiguities and the transnational
movement of ideas. To engage more fully with this approach, Mills’ work could
be more self-conscious, recognizing that his definition of objects and subjects
is not neutral. This consciousness is not particularly apparent in Mills’ work,
as he opts not to engage with certain analyses—troublingly, these are often
analyses of the activist activities of marginalized peoples—but justifies his
decisions on the basis that such analyses are peripheral to his main project,
without considering the silences that his methodological decisions entail. Overall,
Mills’ work shows a masterful use of theory, mobilized through a masterful
examination of transnational linkages, but hindered through the limited
consideration of the agency of peoples in Quebec who were most marginalized by
colonialism.
[1] Donald Fyson, Magistrates, Police, and People: Everyday
Criminal Justice in Quebec and Lower Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press for the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, 2006), 355.
[2] See Michael
Werner and Bénédicte Zimmerman, “Beyond Comparison: Histoire Croisée and the
Challenge of Reflexivity,” History and Theory 45 (February 2006), 30-50.
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