Erasing the nation: Canada’s national literature in the age of globalization

Abstract

One of the great paradoxes about contemporary Canadian literature in English is that, at the same time it is consolidating its international reputation, many of its writers continue to make a conscious effort not to have their works identified with the geopolitical space called Canada. The main object of this article, however, is not to explore why Canadian writers would compose works like Generation X, The English Patient, or Oryx and Crake, but rather to investigate the reasons Canadians would insist on celebrating those texts as Canadian achievements. That is, it examines why Canadians would champion writers who, at times, make such overt attempts to mask where they are from.