The House of Difference

"Combining an analysis of the construction of national identity in both past and present-day public culture with interviews with white Canadians, The House of Difference explores how ideas of racial and cultural difference are articulated in colonial and national projects, and in the subjectivities of people who consider themselves 'ordinary', or simply 'Canadian-Canadians'. Considering whether multiculturalism and pluralism draw on and reinforce racial exclusions and hierarchies of difference, Eva Mackey deconstructs the 'Benevolent Mountie Myth', demonstrating how official 'tolerance' for 'others' functions as an addendum to the invisible, and still dominant, Anglo-Canadian culture, and argues that officially endorsed versions of multiculturalism abduct the cultures of minority groups, pressing them into the service of nation building without promoting genuine respect and autonomy." "Mapping the contradictions and ambiguities in the cultural politics of Canadian identity, The House of Difference opens up new understandings of the operations of 'tolerance' and Western liberalism in a supposedly post-colonial era."--Jacket.