Open Journal Montreal

christian allan bertelsen

identity politics – discourse – deconstruction – semiotics – psychoanalysis – feminism – spatial analysis

as it stands thus far, i am open’s only yellowknife correspondent/editor. the research that i am currently carrying on with addresses questions of identity constitution and social cohesion as they pertain to arrivées (immigrants) and the complicated societies they choose to reside in. (included below is an image of an installation that has inspired me in this regard along with an excerpt of my research)

my relationship to open in fact stems from my friendship with one of it’s creators: risa dickens. i had the pleasure of both meeting and collaborating with her in my m.a.; i think we got along so well because we share a passion for gardening; and this is what i appreciate most about my role here at open, it’s like cultivating naturally creative and fertile soils. the beautiful part of it is that all that i am called upon to do is add water and tend to a myriad of rhizomes that never required my planting.

Integration…
If considered as a means of ontological communication for a moment, then it can certainly be seen as a way of expressing the self. When someone calls on an Other to integrate, s/he is simultaneously and unavoidably imparting a message about her/himself. Especially when it becomes quite clear that the arduous labor of integration is to be primarily carried out by the arrivée. For such an anlage constitutes an incredibly non-dialectical relationship where “instead of seeing […] [the arrivée] as a bridge toward a syncretic possibility, […] [the Quebec government] uses [her/him] as a mirror that reflects the colonialist’s self-image” (JanMohamed 19). When viewed, scrutinized and judged solely from a Quebec cultural perspective, the arrivée’s self becomes eclipsed. What’s more, integration arrogantly places the expectation that the arrivée model her/himself—in some measure—upon a québécois self. Herein lies integration’s ethical transgression, it fails to adequately recognize that the Other’s autonomy must be taken as a sine qua non for social cohesion to be a possibility. And this stems from the fact that integration is an approach to social cohesion that is to some extent modeled upon a misunderstanding of communication, one that inexorably seeks to reduplicate the self. But if this re-engendering of the self is ultimately impossible, where does that leave the arrivée? Well, it leaves her/him on the outside. As Elspeth Probyn argues “outside belonging operates now not as a substantive claim but as a manner of being” (8). Continuing on, she explains that:

[…] the desire that individuals have to belong, a tenacious and fragile desire that is, I think, increasingly performed in the knowledge of the impossibility of ever really and truly belonging, along with the fear that the stability of belonging and the sanctity of belongings are forever past. [Probyn 8.]

Probyn importantly cites the fragility of desire in this regard. When thought of in alignment with integration, it becomes rather crucial that we understand how this ethic, concept and goal might impact an arrivée’s desire, how it might work towards stifling it, or, alternatively, not work hard enough at eliciting it. The ethical predisposition of integration along with so much of the government and academic discourses that represent it, all miss one fundamental point: “the other, not the self, should be the center of whatever “communication” might mean” (Peters 265), which is to say that integration has, for some time now, only been articulated by québécois academics or bureaucrats—in other words, by the self.

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[ originally posted on Friday, January 20th, 2006 at 3:02 pm and is filed under Christian, Communication, Contributors, Everything, Media, On Places and Identities, Writing. ]