Jean Rivard - University of British Columbia

le: the cover-up of a possible operation of the feminine in language. It also
means "to unveil" the fact that, if women are such good mimics, it is because
they are not simply resorbed in this function. They also remain elsewhere .... (76)
Irigaray's argument gathers its strength from her insistence that a woman
writer "remain elsewhere," as several feminist critics have observed. 16
Canadian women writers, whether they are pro- or anti-war, recognize that
language is an important site of political struggle; through language, they
grapple with the problem of their subjugation and devise strategies to deal
with it. In their texts, they prove that they are excellent, playful mimics of
masculine discourse, and can remain exterior to oppressive, male-dominated
wartime language even as they use it to shift the focus from the militaristic
to the domestic. Anticipating Irigaray, women writers use men's
language, use sameness not to reproduce the same history, not to underscore
their own subordination, but to convert marginalization into affirmation,
and to speak from a position of power. Playfully appropriating military language
in order to disrupt its logic and exploit its repressive nature, they do
remain elsewhere. They use combat jargon to décentre strategically the war
narrative, to write women into the discourse, and to signal their own philosophic
and intellectual distance from the men who wage war.
One of women writers' central objectives is to re-interpret, or re-define
war words to eradicate gender exclusivity. McClung specifically singles out
for re-evaluation the term "national service" which, as her unnamed narrator
in The Next of Kin notes, is at present restricted to the soldier who leaves
home. Specifically, the narrator says, "if national service is taken to mean
the doing of something for our country's good which we would not feel it
our duty to do but for the emergencies created by the war, then there are
many ways in which the sincere citizen may serve" (154). But at the
moment, sincere citizens (read women), neither "called up" nor officially
"called upon" to aid the war effort, are excluded from the official definition,
and through no fault of their own, made to feel as if they are "slackers"
(164). Women are keen to pull their weight, but the government, which the
narrator argues can ill afford in wartime to squander any talent, foolishly
refuses to conscript women, to put their energies and abilities to use (163).
Much of the land in Canada is idle, the narrator argues, and those women
who sit knitting socks or crocheting would gladly raise potatoes and chickens
if only they knew how to begin (98-99).
The Next of Kin establishes women's abilities both to create jobs for them-
85