Blah, here is the essay that was making me insane...and I am still insane but I finally wrote the essay- this is the first few paragraphs only, I think I am compelled to post it just so that I look like less of a whack-job (although reading this over I am not so sure...) had to narrow my focus so I mainly zoomed in on orientalism and post-coloniality as it pertains to art in Canada

for some reason quotations are showing up as question marks which i think might actually be fitting

well, here it goes...

In this essay I am going to suggest that, in Canadian society orientalism and art are diametrically opposed. I will discuss what orientalism means in a Canadian context.Edward Said greatly elucidated our knowledge of how different societies are judged by using the example of how Europe and its derivatives viewed the Palestinians. I believe these ideas are valid in understanding how Canadian society views the First Nations people. In Canada there has not been a mass physical genocide of First Nations people like that seen in the United States and yet there has been a mass cultural genocide that was still quite devastating and I believe that the use of orientalism made this genocide possible. I will then discuss the difference between explicit forms of communication like news media and history textbooks versus less explicit forms of communication which would certainly include art. Aspects of experience like personal memory and identity, the very aspects which cultural genocide seeks to destroy, are often difficult to communicate explicitly and tend to be communicated more powerfully through art than the written word. Additionally, art is always somewhat open to the interpretation of the beholder and it is therefore not easy to make people question their own identities and experiences using art. For these reasons, the personal memories and identities that run counter to the those put forth by history books are often more easily communicated by art. Finally, I will discuss how, since orientalism plays such a powerful role in the control of Canadian society, not just in terms of devaluing other ideas and people but also devaluing its own ideas and people while continuing to hold a conception of its own society that does not include these people, art and orientalism in Canada are diametrically opposed. Canada is seen as a European and predominantly Anglo-Saxon society and yet many Canadians have always had cultural influences that were not Anglo-Saxon , perhaps not even French, and maybe not even European. Canada never experienced the sort of mass physical genocide of First Nations people like that seen in the United States. However, there was a mass cultural genocide that was perhaps as violent only in different ways. For individuals to rise to positions of power, or to be heard at all, they had to assimilate into the dominant society (i.e. European society) as best they could and not remember, or at least not claim to remember, anything they may have known about any other societal affiliations, as this association would threaten their credibility. However, this would mean that they were, paradoxically, forced to forget aspects of their own experiences in order to be regarded as knowledgeable. Joanne Arnott says, ? The language of media reports on current events constantly others ?the Natives? from the audience addressed, and this use of language, layered upon the massive ignorance of historical repression, aggravates the dissociation.? (Arnott, 1995:60). The treatment of ?The Natives? within Canada is, in other words, very similar to Edward Said?s conception of the treatment of the Palestinians by Western society. How could something as impersonal as a media report have an impact on an individual?s self-perception? Michel Foucault says ?Nothing in man- not even his body- is sufficiently stable to serve as the basis for self-recognition or for understanding other men...Knowledge, even under the banner of history, does not depend on ?rediscovery,? and it emphatically excludes the rediscovery of ourselves. History becomes ?effective? to the degree that it introduces discontinuity into our very being- as it divides our emotions, dramatizes our instincts, multiplies our body and sets it against itself.? (Foucault, 1977: 153-154). In this manner crucial elements of Canadian history and present-day society have been erased, even when they would seem to be observable and obvious. What is more, people lose contact with not only the story of the nation in which they reside but with the story of their lives, families, and personalhistories.L.M. Findlay says, ?Memory?s estate remains under dispute in Canada today...The rebirth of memory as history ? and its appropriate narration- occurs only when politics give rise to the Hegelian state, so that serious memory and serious politics are coeval:historical memory properly understood is, from its inception and throughout its course,an effect of the state expressed in the prose of self-administration andself-representation.? (Findlay, 2003: 217-219). While it may often seem that memory tellsan objective truth, this is not actually the case.Important, perhaps, is the difference between the way that personal memory and identityare communicated versus the way that a nation communicates what it wants its members to believe. News periodicals and history books communicate ?facts? in an explicit andlinear manner that can be difficult to counter with things like personal memory andidentity which are difficult to communicate in this manner. Joanne Arnott spoke of themedia and representation of First Nations people and of Canadian society as a whole. L.M.Findlay talks about the manipulation of memory by a conception of history imposed by the state. Trinh T. Minh-Ha talks about the meaning of words and how a means of communication can function to hide the truth "To write is to communicate, express, witness, impose, instruct, redeem, or save- at any rate to send out an unambiguousmessage...Obscurity is an imposition on the reader. True, but beware when you cross railroad tracks for one train may hide another train...To write "clearly," one must incessantly prune, eliminate, forbid, purge, purify..."(Trinh, 1989:pp16-17) For a population to be controlled, the means of available communication must be "pruned, eliminated, forbidden, purged, purified," hence the view of words as the most reliable form of communication, which is less of a phenomenon in many societies than in Western society, may actually be a component of this control. Since forms of knowledge like personal memory and identity are often not easy to communicate explicitly, they are often obscured by other forms of communication. As a result, personal memory and history which are not often communicated explicitly are obscured by views imposed by the state. Does orientalism always involve language? Can art be part of this orientalizing force? James Clifford talks about the difference between the ?masterpiece? as represented by ?connoisseurship, the art museum, and the art market? from the ?artifact? as represented by ?history and folklore, the ethnographic museum, material culture, and art.? This system has often served to orientalize non-European art by classifying it as ?artifact? rather than ?masterpiece.? So, it would seem apparent that art can serve as a part of this orientalizing force. However, this classification system does not dictate all of what any given work of art can communicate. The ?artifact? can resist colonization by both presenting how colonization looks from the ?other? side as well as communicating the humanness of the ?other?. Trin-Minh-Ha might say that art certainly can have meaning, but not like a train obscuring all other trains. Even if what is being shown is left up to interpretation, no observer can ever be absolutely certain of why it is being shown
without a more explicit context to place the work in. In this way it is often difficult to discern whether art is orientalizing or whether it is showing the absurdity of orientalist views. Sometimes what a work was supposed to mean as proscribed by the dominant institutions and what it actually ends up meaning are two different matters. In
this way art can be both an orientalizing force and a force that resists orientalism, and sometimes the difference is in the hands of the viewer. In this manner, also, art can be a form of resistance that often passes by the powers that exist to eliminate this resistance; colonial powers will likely only see art by colonized populations as?artifact? and use this classification system to use art as an orientalist tool rather than recognizing it as a tool in resistance of colonization. And the colonial?masterpieces? can be very insidious about how they communicate their own form of resistance. Yes, art can communicate what language communicates, but in a rather different way and this difference is important in the instance of orientalism.