The Liberal Order Framework: A Prospectus for a Reconnaissance of Canadian History

Abstract

How can we get beyond the present socio-cultural versus national-political impasse in Canadian history writing? By a historical practice of re/connaissance, which begins not with the essentialist project of ‘rethinking Canada,’ but rather with the more modest goal of mapping the Canadian state as a project of liberal rule in northern North America. Those who undertake this re/connaissance of the complex moment of liberal hegemony called Canada will have much to learn from the national-political and socio-cultural historians who have come before them. But they will also be doing (and some are already doing) something radically new -because the reconceived category ‘Canada’ in their work denotes not an untheorized context or an unanalyzable essence, but that socio-cultural project through which liberal order became the national-political ‘commonsense’ in northern North America. Abstract: Comment nous sortir de ľimpasse actuel du debat socio-culturel par opposition a national-politique dans les travaux qui s’ecrivent sur ľhistoire canadienne? Par une pratique historique de re/connaissanee, qui debute non pas par le projet essentialiste qui consiste a «repenser le Canada», mais plutot par le but plus modeste de representer ľEtat canadien comme un projet de regne liberal dans la partie septentrionale de ľAmerique du Nord. Les individus qui entreprendront cette re-con naissance ďun moment complexe de ľhegemonie liberale qui s’appelle le Canada auront beaucoup a apprendre des historiens nationaux-politiques et socio-culturels qui les ont precedes. Mais de plus, ils s’engageront (et certains le font deja) dans une voie radicalement nouvelle – parce que la categorie «le Canada» repensee dans leurs travaux denote, non pas un contexte depourvu de theorie ou une entite essentielle impossible a analyser, mais ce meme projet socio-culturel grâce auquel ľordre liberal est devenu le «bon sens» national-politique dans la partie septentrionale de ľAmerique du Nord.

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