Erasing Historical Difference

lenge to an established mainstream informs the most common perception of modern Canadian history. It is inscribed in critical discourse, in the funding policies and assessment procedures of the federal and provincial arts councils, in the rhetoric of the theatres and, for most of its history, in the editorial analysis of the Canadian Theatre Review. By questioning the critical paradigm of I wish to suggest a need to reappraise the ideological forms by which the recent history of Canadian has been constructed, and in the process of that argument, I want to reconsider the general usefulness of theatre as a critical term. This inquiry begins with the idea that in the context of Canadian at least, terms like alternative and mainstream obscure rather than clarify historical forces. These terms enabled critics to define an emerging movement a decade ago but they have outlived their function, and their continued use draws attention to their essentially metaphoric nature. Rather than constantly redefining such terms to align them with changing conditions, perhaps their fundamental validity should be questioned

Archaeology · Art · Orthodoxy · Canadian Identity and History · History