Articles
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Peeping in on Goldie (and liking the show)
In queersexlife: Autobiographical Notes on Sexuality, Gender & Identity Terry Goldie offers up a heady brew of theory and introspection that is both refreshing and biting. The “autobiographical notes” that infuse the book reveal the intimacy and inextricability of personal experience and theoretical perspective which grounds the work and makes it feel “human” and accessible. At the same time, the deeply personal details jar the reader who might find his frankness unfamiliar, if not uncomfortable. And good for him. Goldie’s narratives are not merely casual observations that superficially draw links between the personal and political; instead, he is willing to be vulnerable and raw. Academic writing rarely offers this intimacy—moans and other physical pleasures in the first person—and it is a welcome shake-up. Indeed, it causes the reader, at least this reader, to question what that initial discomfort may mean, about the boundaries of knowledge production and about the scopophilia that positions the reader in a unique relationship to the text, gazing upon the strokes and sounds that emit from the pages.
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Canadian Idle?
Inflation is spiraling out of control in Canada. A huge ego-bubble has developed on Sussex Drive and Bay Street, where chests have been expanding dangerously with every new media report extolling Canada’s success in weathering the global economic storm. First, there was Fareed Zakaria’s laudatory article in Newsweek, followed by Paul Volcker’s call for a banking model that “looks more like the Canadian system than the American system.” And then there was Obama’s visit to Ottawa, during which he reportedly told Harper he was thinking of changing his next campaign slogan to “Yes, we can…ada.”
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Fist of the Spider Woman
When I decided to venture “out,” I yearned for lesbian literatures that would brace my trembling, newborn limbs. I’d spent years projecting my own lesbian desires in my mind’s wide dark room while at the hands of male lovers, but at the brink of queerdom, I struggled to connect sex and emotions. For guidance, I bought the annual Ultimate Lesbian Erotica, which wasn’t ultimate, I was so disengaged from the contrived characters and situations I never finished reading the collection. Instead, I wish I’d picked-up a literary collection like Fist of the Spider Woman: Tales of Fear and Queer Desire, an anthology edited by Vancouver’s Amber Dawn, however, I doubt there were many like it. This anthology’s diverse cast of characters skillfully embodies the political and personal that molds a lesbian’s desire, constructing stories and poems that are sexy and substantive.
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Critique of Intelligent Design
Roughly coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, this timely, interesting, and important book is a firm rejection of the attempts by the contemporary intelligent design (ID) movement to force a religious worldview into the domains of natural and social science. In their examination of the struggle between science and religion, the book’s authors come down forcefully on the side of science, and at the same time shed light on two critical aspects of this debate that have been hitherto largely neglected. First, the writings properly connect the current debate between materialism and creationism to its millennia-long history and thereby provide a valuable historical perspective. Second, they crucially expose the true objectives of the intelligent design movement, goals that entail not only redefining the natural sciences, but also the social sciences as well.
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The Aftermath of War
In the summer of 1974, in a hotel room in Rome, Simone de Beauvoir tape-recorded a series of conversations with her lifelong companion, Jean-Paul Sartre. He was already almost blind and beginning to suffer the illnesses that would take his life six years later. De Beauvoir asked Sartre what works of his he thought had the greatest chance of surviving. Sartre replied, “I think it’s Situations, articles related to my philosophy but written in a very simple style and speaking of things that everybody knows.”
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British Columbia’s Meaningless Climate Debate
Judging by the response of mainstream environmentalists, British Columbia’s recent provincial election was a referendum on how to fight climate change. The Liberal incumbents proposed no change to the carbon tax they introduced last year. The opposition New Democratic Party wanted to replace the tax with “a ‘cap and trade’ plan — just like U.S. President Obama.”
Prominent green NGOs, including the David Suzuki Foundation, the Pembina Institute, and ForestEthics, blasted the NDP for taking a “backward step.” A Pembina representative wrote: “The carbon tax is already showing results. It is important for British Columbia to keep moving forward on climate change rather than starting over again.” The Liberals won the election, so BC’s green future is assured. Right? Wrong.
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State Repression of Sexual Minorities
In 1996 Justice John Wesley McClung, Q.C. ruled against Delwin Vriend in the famous case prompted by his dismissal from a religious college owing to his sexual orientation. Warning against sanctioning “deviant practices,” McClung asserted that the province had appropriately refrained from “the validation of homosexual rights, including sodomy, as a protected and fundamental right, thereby rebutting a millennia [sic] of moral teaching.” Fifty-four years earlier, his father John W. McClung, K.C., led the crown’s prosecution of 12 men for same-sex activities, also in Edmonton.
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Contempo Abo
Noam Gonick spoke on Alert Radio with aboriginal artists Kent Monkman and Adrian Stimson about Two-Spirit in their contemporary art practice. Adrian Stimson is a Blackfoot performance artist living in Saskatoon who works in installation and photography and is well known for his persona “Buffalo Boy” who often appears at the Burning Man festival in Nevada. Toronto-based Kent Monkman plays the role of “Miss Chief Eagle Testicle” in a performance context and is a painter of Cree descent, raised in Winnipeg, who also works in video installation and film.
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Why Queer? Why Now?
First, there hasn’t been a super political queer mag since the Body Politic ended over twenty years ago in 1987. There have been a number of more academic inclined queer theory journals, special journal issues and a steady stream of queer articles. One could say that that there has been an explosion in queer theory and queer studies. This explosion of queer into the public from the 1990s onwards has simultaneously been breathtakingly exciting and boringly normalizing.
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Web Exclusive: War By Other Means
Concerning non-Western elections, it is clear there is but one rule: if the results support pro-US candidates they are deemed ‘democratic’, otherwise they are automatically demonized as ‘fradulent’. The Iranian elections are no different, and the West’s support of Iranian protest and calls of election fraud do not have anything at all to do with the spirit of democracy.
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