Dossier: “The Future of Threat is Forever”: Apocalyptic Fiction in Canada
Feminists are constantly renegotiating their identity. An ongoing process since the third wave, studies on intersectionality have aptly denounced the cisgender white exclusionary oppressive structures that dominated feminist discourses. Renegotiation is central to the movement’s efforts towards exposing “the social imaginary” (Braidotti 104) of gendered systems. But, significant to cross-disciplinary studies within the humanities, renegotiation also mirrors the cyclicality of the apocalypse. Scholar Matthew Cormier specifies that “apocalyptic narratives also pervade current critical and theoretical spaces” (3) due to their effective use as an emblematic tool for presenting a “version of the future, of the end of the world or the ultimate revelation, which never fully materializes” because they reveal “truths, but surely not an ultimate truth” (4). Larissa Lai and Lorraine York confront the effects of the self-contained system in “Rachel” and “How Do We Get Out of Here?”
At a surface level, the two bear no resemblance. More than just differing in genre and form, a decade separates the works on the cyborg character of Rachel from Blade Runner and from a performance of cancellation by an Atwoodian scholar. However, upon closer examination, both express the theoretically conflicting affective process of grieving for the loss of the problematic system they have been programmed to accept. Instead of comparing Rachel’s “policeman” to Lorraine’s “Atwood,” this paper will go a step further and study the root of their attachment. As beloved figures in the feminist literatures of Canada, both Lai and York participate in the tradition of renegotiating feminist identity. In fact, both texts feature efforts towards the practice of what cultural theorist José Esteban Muñoz coins “disidentification,” or the “disengagement from dominant models of subject formation” (Braidotti 117). This paper will thus explore apocalyptic feminist reconstructive memory. It will apply Muñoz’s concept of “disidentification” to “Rachel” by Larissa Lai, and Lorraine York’s “How Do We Get Out of Here?” to enlighten on the theory’s significance for the literatures of Canada.
Cartography as Method
In a thematic sequel to her books The Posthuman (2013) and Posthuman Knowledge (2019), Rosi Braidotti’s Posthuman Feminism (2022) proposes the use of cartography as a tool to combat ideological hegemony. She argues that: “Composing and negotiating with others a gender driven critical cartography—politically infused and theoretically framed—is a way of reaching an adequate understanding of the negative conditions of our historicity” (103). For the world-renowned feminist scholar, the practice of cartography is key to forgoing systematic exclusion by considering all perspectives, representations, and conditions and compiling them into data to achieve a deconstruction of power and, in the process, acquire space for new constructions. In Lai and York’s cases, to properly disidentify from the institutions that govern them, cartography based on textual evidence is essential in localizing the texts within their dominant systems. One issue with applying the same research method to both texts is the danger of overgeneralizing feminist communities. The concern is present in many theorists’ work, as gender is, as Braidotti puts it, a constant “nomadic becoming.” Therefore, “gender cartographies are necessarily localized, situated and perspectivist because they account for specific historical and geopolitical conditions. As such, they express grounded complex singularities, not universal claims” (Braidotti 103). Details on location, race, gender, and sexuality are thus crucial to gather if the data is available, though, because this paper’s subjects are limited both in terms of form, being two short texts and subjects, being characters on a page instead of full biographical case studies, some points of cartography will be limited mostly to imagery and thus, to memory.
As both are narratorial and written from a first-person perspective, memory, especially seeing the monumental impact of memory studies in recent years, is the main provider of available data in Lai and York. Rachel knows she embodies hegemony as a utopian techno-feminine fantasy. She considers herself a “beloved daughter of a new Elysium,” a product of “our [own] flawless manufacture” (30). Thinking of herself in these terms mimics the very real embodied sense of internalization that seemingly everlasting hegemonic structures ingrain in all categories they deem “other.” Similarly, Atwood arguably is, for feminist studies in the literatures of Canada, an oppressive literary master-narrative that “other” women who do not fall into the category of “sad white women” (Thom 109) cannot access. As such, they are left on the sidelines of the feminist canon. Her continuous recycling of the same formula is unmoving in the “CanLit” institution, as demonstrated by Atwood’s current celebrity status. But her actions have repercussions, the UBCAccountable letter being just one example. Ultimately, enforcing dominant literary figures creates affect, which then travels to bodies less protected by the structures put in place to enforce “othering,” reducing artists to any categorization under the label of “diverse.” Writer Kai Cheng Thom expresses as such in her piece “refuse: a trans girl writer’s story” for Refuse: CanLit in Ruins. She writes: “i have never been that kind / of innocent young woman / places like that / were never made / for bodies like mine” (110). Braidotti specifies: “we think with the entire body, or rather we have to acknowledge the embodiment of the brain and the embrainment of the body” (118). Part of York’s cartography, then, is the privileged localized embodiment that allows her to criticize her former object of study. As the Canadian historian says herself: “I built a successful career, one I’ve received promotions, and prizes, and honours for, based on work that was partly devoted to the study of Margaret Atwood’s writing” (134). The current chair of Canadian Literature and Culture at McMaster University, her scholarly “embrainement of the body” in cartographic terms translates into her holding a position of prestige. The status permits York not only to express her opinion on Atwood but to publish it. She possesses localized characteristics such as the financial and reputational means to “turn her back” on the author, to “get out” by declining important job opportunities, requests for critical work, and conference invites just to make a point. The sentiment is important, but York ultimately fails to recognize that the same structural procedures of institutional academia, such as publishing a piece about stepping away from your problematic object of study before figuratively stepping down, not only keep figures such as Atwood in the spotlight but also give them a platform. In her piece published in the same book, Thom also mentions the UBCAccountable letter scandal, but never mentions Atwood by name. She thus brings to the forefront of her piece real problems with “CanLit.” Not a tale of how a performative feminist capitalizes on women’s suffering, but of how the system of hegemony keeps narratives such as Atwood’s at the forefront of the Canadian literary imaginary while excluding those that challenge it.
Opposite to York, “Rachel” does not commit the same fallacy of structure by placing “policeman” and “father” in power, but rather, she speaks of their effects. Results of “false identification/internalized racism” (38) are allotted to masculinity, with figures such as father, policeman, and brother, forming a narrative of gradual ideological confrontation that leads to the figure of a matriarch being spoken to in code, as Rachel returns to her language of origin. Put figuratively, she rejects the linguistic organization set up by hegemony for a speech structure outside the conventions of human talk. She also establishes the authority of many notable dominant members of the historiography of cultural memory. In fact, they all work simultaneously, creating a network of oppression responsible for all of the world’s issues. The capitalist agenda, shifting and transforming in an apocalyptic manner, fuels things such as the institutional structures of religion, warfare, industry, and genocide. Rachel is programmed to recognize these patterns, acknowledging that “judeo-christian logic pumps our hope” (34), that women are “dolls plastic as capital want” (17), that humanity is a “moth before industrialization” (13), that “the blunt rapes/the mass racial graves” (31) and urges “mr sandman [to] send me a scream” (25). Memory scholars Urania Milevski and Lena Wetenkamp explain that “Literature is capable of staging fictional minds which, as ‘transparent minds’ (Cohn 1978), exhibit inner processes that remain hidden in the actual world” (199). As a cyborg, Rachel is not a “fictional mind” but a program capable of imputing “real” data from the past. As Agnieszka Podruczna specifies:
If Rachel’s memories are implanted—as her replicant nature seems to imply—why, then, do those gaps exist at all? One possible answer to this question lies in her double liminality, as it signifies Rachel’s transgression of boundaries and refusal of containment within the ontological classification she is initially inscribed into by the hegemonic system. (80)
Her worldview crosses the boundaries of literature, a common characteristic of science fiction, which explains the straying from Milevski and Wetenkamp. For Lai, the intersectional use of memory and literature suggests that, in addition to staging fictional minds to unveil hidden processes, literature is also capable of staging the condemnation of these dominant processes that make up Podruczna’s “ontological classification,” as proven by Rachel’s aptitude for identifying the underlying structures governing her environment, creation and, ultimately, her body. Cartography as a means of disidentification from respective but also collaborating self-contained systems aside, renegotiating and reconstructing identity based on the amassed data is effective at identifying what transfers and what does not in a comparative study between fiction and nonfiction texts. Its result could even provide instructions for concrete work outside the ideological.
Disindentification: Theory and Practice
After studying both texts’ memories, their implications, and their significance for characters in an effort at cartography, a second analysis of what steps each text takes towards rejecting or separating the body from its constraints prevails. Muñoz cites psychoanalysts Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis to define disidentification. They describe identification as: “[A] psychological process whereby the subject assimilates an aspect, property, or attribute of the other and is transformed, wholly or partially, after the model the other provides. It is by means of a series of identifications that the personality is constituted and specified” (7). The process detailed in Muñoz’s 1999 book Disidentifications is of a performance, inspired by acts of counterpublicity of queer artists seen on stage. He proposes that “a disidentifying subject is unable to fully identify” (7) and specifies that “disidentification is not always an adequate strategy of resistance or survival for all minority subjects” due to case-by-case situations that sometimes require “pronounced and direct” resistance, whereas other times a “conformist path” is needed to “survive a hostile public sphere” (5). Also, he does not reject the idea of applying disidentification to what he calls “majoritarians,” but does inform that “minoritarians” possess richer histories with identity predicated on “hybrid transformations” in response to “the cultural logics of heteronormativity” (5), which renders the theory more effective. Lai’s “Rachel” embodies a performance of disidentification in a literal form, through poetry. Moreover, the cyborg’s racialized body is a physical conduit for both Muñoz’s condition of hybridity and Crenshaw’s intersectionality, which draws attention to the multiplicity of the “before and after” of heteronormative rule. York, in a sense, also offers a performance of disidentification, though without taking the steps to properly disengage from the CanLit imaginary and ways of doing taught by figures such as Atwood. This reflects the converging relationship between the theory’s “minoritarians” and “majoritarians.” In her writing, York seems hesitant to abandon the structures that continue to protect her, but Rachel has no choice but to do so to gain agency, consciousness, and freedom from the will of other hegemonic entities.
Disengaging identity in “Rachel” begins with memory. The cyborg initiates the process by discovering her identity independent of the patriarch. She does so by disassembling the wrappings and compartments, imprisoning her capacity to recall synthetically. She expresses: “I search my memory’s lineage/for signs of suture” (20). Upon realizing she has no original memories, Rachel chooses to imitate those around her. She says: “I auto every memory/mimetic someone else’s” (21). Mimesis, as specified by Plato, does not hold value for creation purposes. Instead, as the memories are essentially imitations of society’s “true forms,” three times removed from humanity’s core, she, in the process, gathers revelations she might not have found if passively experiencing her artificial memory. In a way, Rachel gradually creates the cartography of her environment after gaining memory-consciousness, confronting differing readings with new ethical concepts such as good/bad and right/wrong. Therefore, next, she asks questions, namely, about her previous attachment towards hegemony. Of her relationship with Policeman, she asks: “my policeman, i said/is this love?” (26). Ostensibly realizing the possessive pronoun employed, “my,” to designate her lover, her newfound impartiality highlights a history of toxic materiality allotted to partners, and historically, women, that associate love with quantifiable goods. Another confrontation is the one prompting her series of inquiries. She thinks about the foundations that govern the right to exist and, in parallel, its main actor within the dogmatic strictures of holy law: the patriarchy. She proposes: “the law of my birth/four years line my fibre/his rib? or any other part/belonging to a man” (20). The same emotion of possessiveness persisting throughout her cartography makes clear that Rachel actively prioritizes manipulation in disidentifying from the hold of her male creators. She also highlights questions about race when rejecting hegemonic identity. She testifies: “I went to the other side/false identification/internalized racism” (38), which later prompts the line, “does she understand/our father’s fascist dream?” (36). Experiencing life always at the expense of one part of identity, such as race for feminism, or race for queerness, is a key component of Muñoz’s disidentification theory. As Rachel realizes the “false identification” these factors chosen by dominant forces represent, she also realizes how easily manipulable they can become, all to support a patriarch’s “fascist dream.”
The culture of materiality, preserved in Rachel’s observations, translates into a need for tangible evidence. She seeks proof of the possibility of disidentifying, saying: “only photographs/will stave the terror” (32). In memory studies, photographs are usually associated with transgenerational memory; scholar Marianne Hirsch thinks of them as “points of intersection between past and present, memory and postmemory, personal remembrance and cultural recall,” connecting “the generations, [and] the experiencers with their descendants” (205). Interestingly, in their article, Urania Milevski and Lena Wetenkamp associate the properties of the photograph with those of literature, writing that the compositional aspects of the text, such as its language, can communicate truths of visual figurations and even trauma (206). In addition to transmitting culture, memories create affect. Thus, mistaking a text for anything less than its status of permanent memory would be grave. York hints at the idea in her work. When naming Atwood’s wrongs, she, although not deliberately, mostly names instances where the author failed to conceptualize the responsibilities that entailed in producing and collaborating on a text. In the case of the UBCAccountable letter, for Milevski and Wetenkamp, her signature would possess the same connotations as a scar, a wound or a tattoo. Atwood produces other targeted and thus damaging memories, namely “Am I a Bad Feminist?” defending and establishing the supremacy and, consequently, hegemonic backbone of her stance on Galloway, that of “vigilance,” and the unmoving nature of her “feminist icon” label in the CanLit imaginary. As affect does, perceptible intensities arose for many writers of the literatures of Canada, though women of colour suffered the most. Radio host and novelist Jen Sookfong Lee brings up anecdotes of Atwood, where she talks down and scolds women, colleagues, and peers to prove the rightness of her stance, saying: “her power, was something she was willing to use to silence young women who had very little power at all” (qtd. in York 133). Clearly, Atwood rejects the worth of Muñoz’s disidentification for all women, and herself. Instead, she stays complicit by remaining “vigilant” towards men in power. She even goes a step further by projecting her idea of rightness onto others, forcing the hand of institutional dominance in the process to protect herself from it.
Conclusion
What ties together cartography, memory studies, disidentification, apocalypse, feminism, and the intersection of fiction and nonfiction is a detailed study of what happens to identity when a subject chooses to disassemble itself from the dominant culture oppressing it. York, on the one hand, begins the process with the right intentions with “Where Do We Go From Here?” She questions the structural impact of celebrity figures on the literatures of Canada and wonders what it means for her own identity in the Canadian academic sphere. But as the last line of text signifies, she still plans on reaping the benefits of a system of apocalyptically, excluding the work on identity she tries to push: “The best I can do is to use the measure of academic celebrity I possess to make clear where I stand, and with whom. I need not ‘get out of here’ but, on the contrary, to stay in” (136). Lai, on the other hand, demonstrates that in “Rachel,” disidentifying from the hegemonic structures dictating someone’s identity reveals, in the process, the fluid movements happening both on the surface and in the interior consciousness of a capitalist society. She achieves cartography more successfully by providing her own observations instead of relying on textual evidence, unlike York, who insists on highlighting Atwood’s materially oppressive actions, such as letters, tweets, and journal articles. As such, reimagining identity in apocalyptic worlds, whether the imagined CanLit institution or a cyberpunk Blade Runner fantasy, remains useful towards identifying what transfers from fiction to nonfiction. Subjectivity is ultimately the answer. Just as Muñoz predicts, disidentification only works partially on “majoritarians,” especially when they are not willing to properly detach to achieve deliverance.
Works Cited
- Atwood, Margaret. “Am I a bad feminist?”, The Globe and Mail, January 13, 2018 [Updated July 9, 2020], https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/am-i-a-bad-feminist/article37591823/.
- Braidotti, Rosi. “Posthuman Feminism and Gender Methodology.” Why Gender?, edited by Jude Browne, 1st ed., Cambridge University Press, 2021, pp. 101–25. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108980548.007.
- Braidotti, Rosi. Posthuman Feminism, Polity Press, 2022.
- Cormier, Matthew. “Theorizing the Apocalyptic Turn in the Literatures of Canada: Un/Veiling the Apocalyptic Direction in Affect Studies.” 2021, pp. 1–22. ResearchGate, https://doi.org/10.1515/9781772125245-003.
- Lai, Larissa. Automaton Biographies. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2009.
- Milevski, Urania, and Lena Wetenkamp. “Introduction: Relations between Literary Theory and Memory Studies.” Journal of Literary Theory, vol. 16, no. 2, Sep. 2022, pp. 197–212. http://www.degruyterbrill.com, https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2022-2022.
- Muñoz, José Esteban. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. U of Minnesota Press, 1999.
- Podruczna, Agnieszka. “Transgressive Automatons. Re-Visioning the Cyborg in Larissa Lai’s Rachel.” Przegląd Kulturoznawczy, vol. 55, no. 1, 2023, pp. 69–83.
- Thom, Kai Cheng. “refuse: a trans girl writer’s story.” CanLit in Ruins, edited by Erin Wunker et al., Book*hug Press, 2018, pp. 108–113.
- York, Lorraine. “How Do We Get Out of Here? An Atwoodian Scholar Signing Off.” CanLit in Ruins, edited by Erin Wunker et al., Book*hug Press, 2018, pp. 131–136.
About the Contributor
Geneviève Flanagan
Geneviève Flanagan (she/her) is a master’s student in English literature at the University of Toronto. She recently completed a bachelor’s degree in English studies at the University of Moncton, where her interest in intersectionality in feminist texts from Canadian literatures first emerged.
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