REAPRESENTANDO AS AMÉRICAS: A ESCRITA CANADENSE A CAMINHO DE UMA SOBREVIVÊNCIA HÍBRIDA

Abstract

The task undertaken within this theoretical study is to reflect upon contemporary debates concerning national identity, especially in what concerns the condition of Canada, as to find out how the idea of a fixed time and space might be destabilised. Margaret Atwood’s thematic guide Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972) provides me with the major framework for conducting such analysis, even though the conclusion whereto I get thereby is slightly different from hers. Time, space, identity, reality: everything entails not stability and/or the reinforcement of pureness – on the contrary, these terms all depend on changing continually. The changes never stop, they are just rearranged in a metamorphic array of events occurring sequentially and overlaying one another. In this confusing and complex cultural functioning, it is essential to take such ambivalent and multifaceted identity inconsistency into account when one tries to understand how cultures emerge, interact, and proliferate in the Americas. Nations are texts, those who integrate these nations are readers, and literature is therefore the subjective reality that surfaces out from their experiencing this specific locale. The parallels that might be drawn between the countries within the American continent, and their relevance and/or applicability to the understanding of one another, is an evidence of their interdependence. Fixed identities are never there to be respected; they exist to be questioned, discredited, and finally obliterated.