Joseph Heath and Tanya Talaga focus on different axes of Canadian identity
If you attended the Guelph Lecture — On Being Canadian this past week, you may have asked yourself, “What does it mean to be Canadian?” It’s easy to give the canned answers about maple syrup, hockey, or even the old standard: “peace, order, and good government.”
Here is what the Guelph Lecture is hoping to emphasize, according to their mission statement:
“[The] Guelph Lecture — On Being Canadian continues to broaden the scope and number of voices that promote and foster public dialogue on, and greater understanding of, ideas and issues of concern to Canadians — and everyone.”
Journalist Tanya Talaga began the event by reading from her book Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City. Immediately following her talk, you may have found your head swimming with questions of the following sort:
How did the residential schools exist for as long as they did?
Why has the Canadian government been largely silent on Indigenous issues?
Why has Canadian national identity been so caught up with hockey, but not this? Talaga was explicit about the aims of both her book and her lecture, calling on everyone in the audience to be attentive to what she was saying and to join in reconsidering what it means to be Canadian.University of Toronto philosophy professor Joseph Heath gave the keynote address. His lecture focused on the rise of the alt-right and their appropriation of countercultural politics.
Immediately following his talk, you may have found your head swimming with other questions:
Will the alt-right persist?
Are countercultural politics always bad?
Are we mistaken for being concerned with political correctness?
Heath specifically addressed our concern with political correctness — or, as he calls it, neo-Victorianism. As Heath sees it, a focus on political correctness is a focus on etiquette. After the lecture, I asked Heath what he thought countercultural politics did in practice. “Countercultural politics redirect people’s attention [away] from … traditional political questions,” he said. In sum, certain political tactics redirect our concerns.
[media-credit name=”Jordan Walters” align=”alignnone” width=”1020″]
There is an attention game going on at the Guelph Lecture. Both speakers had something salient to be communicated. As I was walking home from the talk, I observed where my attention had been directed. I was wondering about Canadian indigenous issues. I was wondering about political correctness. I was wondering where my attention should finally land as I try to answer the question, “What does it mean to be Canadian?” Whoever wins the attention game, in effect, wins the answer to the question. It is up to us to choose an appropriate response to the question, but we first have to choose what gets the bulk of our attention.
Photo by Jordan Walters