Criticizng Stanley's Article: Whose Public? Whos Memory? Racisms. Grand Narratves and Canadian History

History is a discipline fraught with controversy, in which, only one historical perspective of a past event is able to establish itself in the “grand narrative”. A grand narrative is the result of historical controversy. In the attempt to make history favorable to certain groups of a nation or even to manipulate its public, numerous historical perspectives have disappeared into one perspective and it is then established in a nation’s public memory. Especially in Canada, a nation of a very heterogeneous population, this creates racialized groups, “the imagined community” that simultaneously exclude and include groups of people. In his 2006 article, Whose Public? Whose Memory? Racisms. Grand Narratives and Canadian History, Timothy Stanley examines the forces that create and inform Canadian public memory and the consequent impact on the development of 21^st century Canada. Interestingly, the problem that he raises in his article is often denied by Canadians. Hence, in his article, Stanley attempts to prove that, racism in Canadian history exists and has a negative impact on Canadian society but it is obscured by “public memory’s reliance on grand narrative”.[i] He supports this claim by exposing the exclusions that result from problematic and yet subtle assumptions of grand narrative, multicultural add-ons and the “inability of grand narrative frameworks to give an adequate account of racism”^.[ii] Stanley’s arguments are generally logical and many of his examples sufficiently support them. However, there are limitations and gaps in some of his examples and his arguments provoke a serious question.

            In order to prove the subtle existence of racism in Canadian history and its consequences, Stanley describes the problematic assumptions of grand narrative using primary sources of evidence. The first primary evidence that Stanley uses is the 2001 Dominion Institute/Ipsos-Ried Canada Day survey, in which, trivial questions such as identifying the first Prime Minister of Canada. The expected and the correct answer to these questions prove that Canadian history is euro-centric and thus, circumscribed because they are correct only under the assumptions created by grand narrative that Canada is a “naturally occurring and unquestioned category” than “an actual state called ‘Canada’”.[iii]  In other words, the “beginnings” of Canadian history is not marked by the firsts of the wide range of groups in Canada but by the firsts that predates Canada – the European progression. This evidence develops his points sufficiently by first illustrating how Canadian history, or the entire subject of history for that matter, is often falsely viewed as a set of true and invariable facts. Only when this is understood, the readers can comprehend the meaning of the second primary evidence of his argument, which is the impact of this view. The second primary evidence is a quote from an African-Canadian student, Denise, who left school because the school curriculum, which has succumbed completely to the one- sided grand narrative, did not represent her racial background.[iv] The example explains that problematic assumptions create exclusions which lead students to disengage or simply feel detached from education. It is evident through Stanley’s thesis that the second example is intended to be compared to an average Canadian citizen and the level of his nationalism. Therefore, the consequence of grand narrative is the discouragement of participation to the Canadian society. The idea of nationalism will be further elaborated later. The two examples used by Stanley coherently prove his argument to be true without any limitations or gaps and so, the argument effectively supports his thesis. Similarly, his second argument, the exclusions as a result of multicultural add-ons is coherent like the first. It uses a secondary source of evidence of Canadian Museum of Civilization which displays European Progress as its main history and tokenizes everything else and of Black History Month which has become ghettoized due to becoming a multicultural add-on.[v] In Consequence, some Canadians are again, are considered as outsiders. Although Stanley’s first and second argument is coherent, there are gaps still present in the article.

            The solutions suggested by Stanley provoke a serious question. Since the problem raised by the article is the ‘inevitable’ exclusion due to public memory he eliminates the concept of public memory in his solutions. As a result, he proposes a rather an individualistic approach to the problem. He suggests that, the solution to this problem is learning about one’s own past first as a foundational knowledge and then allowing other point of views to interact with the personal view. People should also learn how their view intertwines with that of others. One should also enhance the sense of how the community that one lives in has been constructed by the people who has gone before.[vi] They fix the problem but create another. How can people be patriotic Canadian citizen when they are no concrete definition of what Canadian is? Since the study of history starts with “in my country” Canadians can never grow a sense of nationalism in Canada but rather “in their country”. Also, lack of nationalism cannot create a vibrant nation in a democratic society where participation and share of power is its goal in terms of social development. Thus the most important question raised by the article is how racialization can be solved and the vast number of imagined communities can be reduced - How can we make public memory more inclusive instead of eliminating it all together? A more suitable solution is ironically inspired by one of the primary sources of examples in the article used to explain the concept of imagined community. Few years ago in Lethbridge Alberta, the Toronto Blue Jays won the World Series for the first time. People went to the streets and said “we won! We won!”. They have not contributed to the victory but the Blue Jay’s victory that day became the nation’s victory.[vii] In the same way, history should not be an individualistic approach but it should be learning about a Canadian victory, in which every Canadian is part of Canada’s heroic feat, such as the World Wars. Therefore, Stanley’s argument, in which, “the inability of grand narrative frameworks to give adequate account of racism”[viii] is not a very important point. A secondary source of evidence that is to be discussed is Stanley’s narrative of the racist anti-Chinese history in Canada. His purpose for adding this particular evidence into the article is “to highlight the extent to which such a history cannot be contained within grand narratives’ celebration of European colonization.”.[ix] However, the racist history is not important to be included which invalidates his last argument and the examples that support it. It is not important because what matters is the racialized history of Canada, not the history of racism itself. Instead, the third argument and in turn, his solution would have been more convincing if it dealt with the inability of the grand narrative to include histories of Canadian victory in which all Canadians participate in.

            Timothy J. Stanley exposes the racialized history of Canada which is obscured and its consequences. He describes the exclusions that result from problematic and yet subtle assumptions of grand narrative, multicultural add-ons and the “inability of grand narrative frameworks to give an adequate account of racism”. The first two arguments illustrate competently the racial exclusions that exist in the Canadian grand narrative. However, eliminating the grand narrative is not the solution – making it more inclusive in order to enhance nationalism and participation is.