A Quarterly of Criticism and Review i^^^^^^^^fcEjfc $15

More documents

Recommendations

Info

$\s mYevtew KALEIDOSCOPE - University of British Columbia$

$\s mYevtew ELECTRONIC ADDITION - University of British Columbia$

Global/Locals the return of Hong Kong from Britain to Chinaapproached this summer, local and international media chronicled thecountdown and its effects on the Pacific Rim with something resemblingobsession. In Europe over Christmas, I shook my head at an article inFrankfurter Allgemeine (a leading German daily) which appeared to lament"the conquest" of Vancouver by "the Chinese" seeking "refuge" in this"satellite of Hong Kong" (Brigitte Scherer, "Der grosse Sprung iiber denPazifik," Frankfurter Allgemeine, 7 Dec. 1996; my translation). Although sherehearses the stereotypical observations about rising property prices andthe desecration of an Edenic natural environment by "monster houses,"however, the author also writes approvingly of the conversion of what sheconsiders a former hicktown into a global city whose population, hithertounsophisticated and devoted to sports, has learnt from the newcomers toshop in expensive designer stores and relax in outdoor cafes while "so far,the consumption of food outdoors has been prohibited [sic]."The errors in this piece range from the amusing to the infuriating (visastudents at UBC and SFU are rumoured to pay an annual $14,000 in tuitionfees each, and homeowners on the North Shore are said to suspend theirgarbage cans from chains to protect them from "racoons," "evidence of theever-present drama" provided by a "grandiose and cruel natural environment"),but these errors are to a measure typical of the discursive confusionsattending "rimspeak" (Bruce Cumings, "Rimspeak; or The Discourse of the'Pacific Rim'," What Is In a Rim?) generally and the rhetoric surroundingthe Hong Kong turnover in the Western media in particular. Returned toNorth America, I was instantly confronted with a series of articles on thesubject in the New York Times which, while not as scurillous as the item inFrankfurter Allgemeine, still trotted out a predictable mix of economic hype
Editorialand cultural cliché. Both the Vancouver Sun and the Globe and Mail havepursued the topic assiduously. Here, the misconceptions are perhaps not asglaring, but there is still ethnic innuendo galore. On a recent weekend, forinstance, the Sun featured a four-page report on "Hong Kong and Us," whilethe Globe translated art appreciation into stockbroker's jargon by declaring"the Asian cultural community on Canada's West Coast [to be] hot, hot,hot" (Chris Dafoe, "East Heats West," Globe and Mail, May 3,1997).Analysts of "rimspeak" have pointed out how its practitioners tend to positthe Pacific Rim as the quintessential postmodern space, all mobility andglobal access, but in describing the region's characteristics still adhere toentrenched binary constructs derived from orientalism or frontierism. Nevertheless,three remarkable recent collections of critical essays—What Is In a Rim*.Critical Perspectives on the Pacific Region Idea, ed. Arif Dirlik (1993), Asia/Pacificas Space of Cultural Production, eds. Rob Wilson and Arif Dirlik (1995), andGlobal/Local: Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary, eds. RobWilson and Wimal Dissanayake (1996), the first published by WestviewPress, the remainder by Duke University Press—go some considerable waytoward disentangling not only the corporate rhetoric of "rimspeak" but alsothe cultural studies lingo posturing as its analytic superior: "Too much ofcultural studies, in this era of uneven globalization and the two-tier informationhighway, can sound like a way of making the world safe and userfriendlyfor global capital and the culture of the commodity form" (RobWilson and Wimal Dissanayake, "Introduction," Global/Local). Workingfrom a variety of perspectives ranging from anthropology and geography topolitics and history, and drawing on literature, film, journalism, polemic andother forms of discourse, the essays collected in these three volumes remainalert to social injustice and uneven modernization, to orientalisms revivedor re-invented, and to energetic localisms which insist on formulating theirown imaginary, "transnationalization, that master-narrative of globalizedproduction" (Wilson, Dissanayake 4) notwithstanding.Thus, Karen Kelsky discusses alternatives to the Madama Butterfly mythwhich, with its vision of the East as feminine, mysterious, and passivelyready to give up its riches, continues to influence Western economic thinking,as headlines such as "Wooing the Orient: With Cash Reserves and GrowthRates on the Rise" (Ottawa Business Life, April 1988) or "Westerners [Are]Told Far East [Is] Glittering with Opportunity" [Calgary Herald, 13 Feb 1988)will readily attest. Kelsky, an anthropologist, describes the phenomenon of
Page 1: A Quarterly of Criticism and Review
Page 5: RobertB r i n g h u r s tZhàozhou
Page 8 and 9: was the later opinion of Frank Tayl
Page 10 and 11: self-entrapment and death, Patrick
Page 13 and 14: Lowrystopped talking more than a ne
Page 15 and 16: LowrySeen as a pictural surface, as
Page 17 and 18: Lowryto exist first and foremost in
Page 19 and 20: L o w r yself-making, he needed to
Page 21 and 22: Lowry"Excessive because language ca
Page 23 and 24: Lowry, ed. Swinging in the Maelstro
Page 25 and 26: LeaLittlewolfcoldI dreamrasp breath
Page 27 and 28: BoasWriting, even writing which aim
Page 29 and 30: BoasMuch was done by Dr. Franz Boas
Page 31 and 32: Boasapplicable to every society and
Page 33 and 34: When we discover that there are sev
Page 35 and 36: Boasinto the camera, and speak to s
Page 37 and 38: Boasform of distortion that involve
Page 39 and 40: he alone has access) which he heard
Page 41 and 42: Boasawkwardness, strangeness and "e
Page 43 and 44: Boasitself; his own narratology her
Page 45 and 46: Boasstories to suit his own tonal a
Page 47 and 48: DavidMcGimpseyToo Much Slouching,No
Page 49 and 50: DavidHeinimannIronized ManA Jest of
Page 51 and 52: Laurence & A t w o o drather what i
Page 53 and 54:
Laurence & A t w o o dtional. What
Page 55 and 56:
Laurence & A t w o o dfrom him, kep
Page 57 and 58:
L a u r e n c e & A t w o o dhe can
Page 59 and 60:
L a u r e n c e 8t A t w o o dmade
Page 61 and 62:
L a u r e n c e fit A t w o o diron
Page 63 and 64:
L a u r e n c e fit A t w o o di Wo
Page 65 and 66:
BeverleyBrahicObjets d'ArtSliding i
Page 67 and 68:
TomWaymanA poet is allowed to use t
Page 69 and 70:
JohnPassAristotle's LanternWhen per
Page 71 and 72:
K a t h l e e nW a l lRepresenting
Page 73 and 74:
A t w o o d & M u n r othe nature o
Page 75 and 76:
A t w o o d & Munroindividual autho
Page 77 and 78:
A t w o o d & M u n r ofrom pain. I
Page 79 and 80:
A t w o o d & M u n r oto me, after
Page 81 and 82:
A t w o o d & M u n r oauthority al
Page 83 and 84:
A t w o o d 8* Munroinert and unoff
Page 85 and 86:
At wood & MunroNOTES1 I am here ent
Page 87 and 88:
A t w o o d & MunriLanser, Susan. F
Page 89 and 90:
CraigB u r n e t tLandscape with Co
Page 91 and 92:
JamieOoppAffirming Mysteryin Eric M
Page 93 and 94:
McCormackthat the smell emanates fr
Page 95 and 96:
McCormackdevice of texts within tex
Page 97 and 98:
McCormackgood to live," so the worl
Page 99 and 100:
McCormackclaim, in his introduction
Page 101 and 102:
McCormackkeywords, which is appropr
Page 103 and 104:
McCormackThe Carrick festival also
Page 105 and 106:
McCormack1 My own preference is to
Page 107 and 108:
RobertB r i n g h u r s tThe Living
Page 109 and 110:
Books in Reviewof cannibalism, were
Page 111 and 112:
Books in Reviewautobiographical, ge
Page 113 and 114:
Books in ReviewBeran's conclusion e
Page 115 and 116:
Books in Reviewhave, despite all th
Page 117 and 118:
Books in Reviewliterary and social
Page 119 and 120:
Books in Reviewmen. Some would say
Page 121 and 122:
Books in ReviewPoets as true Genius
Page 123 and 124:
Books in ReviewIn a similar way, Mc
Page 125 and 126:
Books in Reviewreproduced in black
Page 127 and 128:
Books in ReviewThe engaging indirec
Page 129 and 130:
Books in Reviewpoem or an entire ge
Page 131 and 132:
Books in Reviewof its scale and den
Page 133 and 134:
Books in ReviewKaplan's elaborate b
Page 135 and 136:
Books in Reviewand in regaining cul
Page 137 and 138:
Books in Reviewevents and the story
Page 139 and 140:
Books in ReviewIn "The Side of the
Page 141 and 142:
Books in Reviewtask. Utilizing cont
Page 143 and 144:
Books in Reviewan exhilarating sens
Page 145 and 146:
Books in ReviiA Daughter's DilemmaJ
Page 147 and 148:
Books in Reviewopening—"In the be
Page 149 and 150:
Books in Reviewand "lidded with app
Page 151 and 152:
Books in Reviewits sombre social re
Page 153 and 154:
Books in Reviewstudy is lucid and i
Page 155 and 156:
Books in Reviewdemographics in the
Page 157 and 158:
Books in Review"référence littér
Page 159 and 160:
Books in Reviewdiacy of the dialogu
Page 161 and 162:
Books in Reviewand biting in sunles
Page 163 and 164:
Books in ReviewMétis from Webster'
Page 165 and 166:
Books in Reviewof critical authorit
Page 167 and 168:
Books in Reviewher mother "defied a
Page 169 and 170:
Books in Reviewtion with "Goodbye,"
Page 171 and 172:
Books in ReviewScheuermann examines
Page 173 and 174:
Books in ReviewOn a less serious no
Page 175 and 176:
Books in ReviewVoices and ChoicesJa
Page 177 and 178:
Books in Reviewtemps à coups de co
Page 179 and 180:
Books in Reviewhomes symbolically r
Page 181 and 182:
B o o k s in R e v i e wpossibly—
Page 183 and 184:
Books in Reviewthis poem, both the
Page 185 and 186:
L a s tP a gMapping 1996W.H. NewAt
Page 187 and 188:
L a s tP a g e sa lot of readers, I
Page 189 and 190:
LastPagesbetween inheritance and en
Page 191 and 192:
L a s tP a g e srary British Columb
Page 193 and 194:
LastPagesFurther, Bourdieu's assert
Page 195 and 196:
L a s tP a g e sapply nonetheless.
Page 197 and 198:
LastPagesBringhurst's The Calling:
Page 199 and 200:
LastPagesretire their legs, those c
show all

A Quarterly of Criticism and Review i^^^^^^^^fcEjfc $15

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?