Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada - Softcover

Thobani, Sunera

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802094546 ISBN 13: 9780802094544

Publisher: University of Toronto Press, 2007

Synopsis

Questions of national identity, indigenous rights, citizenship, and migration have acquired unprecedented relevance in this age of globalization. In Exalted Subjects, noted feminist scholar Sunera Thobani examines the meanings and complexities of these questions in a Canadian context. Based in the theoretical traditions of political economy and cultural / post-colonial studies, this book examines how the national subject has been conceptualized in Canada at particular historical junctures, and how state policies and popular practices have exalted certain subjects over others.

Foregrounding the concept of 'race' as a critical relation of power, Thobani examines how processes of racialization contribute to sustaining and replenishing the politics of nation formation and national subjectivity. She challenges the popular notion that the significance of racialized practices in Canada has declined in the post Second World War period, and traces key continuities and discontinuities in these practices from Confederation into the present. Drawing on historical sociology and discursive analyses, Thobani examines how the state seeks to 'fix' and 'stabilize' its subjects in relation to the nation's 'others.' A controversial, ground-breaking study, Exalted Subjects makes a major contribution to our understanding of the racialized and gendered underpinnings of both nation and subject formation.

About this title

About the Author

Sunera Thobani is a professor in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia.

From the Back Cover

'The objectives of Exalted Subjects are unique to the fields of sociology, political science, history, and philosophy. By utilizing the work of a number of contemporary social and political theorists, Sunera Thobani establishes a critical lens through which she examines the creation and maintenance of what is understood to be the -exalted- nature of the national subject in Canada. This is a very important contribution to critical studies of Canadian nationalism and will be key in introducing new readers to a breadth of indigenous studies, feminist studies, and social theory.'-Davina Bhandar, Canadian Studies Program, Trent University

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802094546
• ISBN 13: 9780802094544
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384