Creative Subversions ─ Whiteness, Indigeneity, and the National Imaginary

Creative Subversions explores how whiteness and Indigeneity
are articulated through iconic images of Canadian identity -- and the
contradictory and contested meanings they evoke. These benign, even
kitschy, images, she argues, are haunted by ideas about race,
masculinity, and sexuality that circulated during the formative years
of Anglo-Canadian nationhood.

In this richly illustrated book, Margot Francis shows how national
symbols such as the beaver, the railway, the wilderness of Banff
National Park, and ideas about "Indianness" evoke nostalgic
versions of a past that cannot be expelled or assimilated. As
Canadians consume versions of a past that does not nourish,
the living themselves become ghostly. Juxtaposing historical images
with material by contemporary artists, Francis shows how artists are
giving taken-for-granted symbols new and suggestive meanings. From
director Richard Fung's Dirty Laundry to the work of
Indigenous artists Jeff Thomas and Kent Monkman and to Shauna Dempsey
and Lorri Milan's performance work Lesbian Park Rangers, this
book explores how banal objects can be re-imagined in ways that offer
the possibility of moving from an unproblematized possession by the
past to an imaginative reconsideration of it.

Margot Francis is an associate professor of
women's studies and sociology at Brock University.

Margot Francis is an associate professor ofwomen's studies and sociology at Brock University.