Transnational Canadas

"In presenting transnational Canadas as a process, and a practice, Dobson enacts an ethics of reading that accounts for not only the texts of CanLit but also the contexts in which they are produced, circulated, and consumed, read and re-read, by academic and non-academic readers alike." - Gillian Roberts, University of Nottingham, British Journal of Canadian Studies, Volume 23 (Number 2), 2010
``Dobson moves deftly between textual and contextual analysis: in approaching established, canonical texts, he examines both their canonicity and the form and content of the works themselves; in his study of more recent work, his attention to the implications of such phenomena as the Giller Prize persuasively argues that we must consider Canadian literature within its economic context, given the function of books as 'cultural commodities that participate in the logic of capital'.'' -- Gillian Roberts, University of Notthingham -- British Journal of Canadian Studies, 23.2, 201012
``Arguing from the premise that `writing in Canada has become transnational,' Dobson (Mount Royal College, Canada) ponders `questions of belonging and subjectivity in the world of global capitalism.' He begins in the 1960s and 1970s with the exclusive, anti-American nationalism of Margaret Atwood's Surfacing and Survival, Dennis Lee's Civil Elegies, and the messianically weak proto-postmodernsim of Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers. Even more polemically, he reads the multiculturalism of the 1980s event in Joy Kagawa's Obasan amd Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of the Lion to be problematic, confused, and ultimately co-opted by the dominant state discourse they superficially appear to challenge; Jeanette Armstrong's Slash, Dobson argues, remains that decade's most coherent and cogent challenge to the legacy of colonialism. Attempting to construct a `transnational theory' at the intersections of Marxism, deconstruction, postcolonialism, and indigenous thinking in the current decade, Dobson discovers in Roy Miki's Surrender and Dionne Brand's What We All Long For writing that successfully articulates `new subjectivities' emerging under transnationalism, although he points out that the awarding of a recent Giller Prize to Vincent Lam's Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures shows the power and persistence of the market forces that have turned `mainstream multiculturalism' into `commodification of difference.'.... Recommended.'' -- D.R. McCarthy, Huron University College -- CHOICE, April 2010, 201004
``Transnational Canadas is the first book-length consideration of transnationalism's effects on the production of Canadian literature, on critical responses to it and, in a more general sense, on the political and social climate of the country as we consider issues of identity and belonging. As such, the book is significant and welcome. Broad in scale, it is an excellent survey of changing approaches to the idea of a national literature in the last fifty years.... Dobson balances theoretical discussion with readings of key Canadian texts, highlighting the debates these texts have provoked throughout their critical reception.... Throughout, Dobson's voice is assured, clear and often wryly funny.... Transnational Canadas is both an excellent history of political movements within the Canadian literary and cultural scene, and a foundational text itself, one which will be integral to scholarship going forward.'' -- Susanne Marshall, Dalhousie University -- The Dalhousie Review, Spring 2010, 201007
``Kit Dobson likes to dive into cultural theory at the deep end.... Transnational Canadas is sophisticated, engrossing.'' -- Jon Kertzer -- University of Toronto Quarterly, Volume 81, number 3, Summer 2012, 201211