Timing Canada
The Shifting Politics of Time in Canadian Literary Culture
Description
From punch clocks to prison sentences, from immigration waiting periods to controversial time-zone boundaries, from Indigenous grave markers that count time in centuries rather than years, to the fact that free time is shrinking faster for women than for men - time shapes the fabric of Canadian society every day, but in ways that are not always visible or logical. In Timing Canada, Paul Huebener draws from cultural history, time-use surveys, political statements, literature, and visual art to craft a detailed understanding of how time operates as a form of power in Canada. Time enables everything we do - as Margaret Atwood writes, "without it we can't live." However, time also disempowers us, divides us, and escapes our control. Huebener transforms our understanding of temporal power and possibility by using examples from Canadian and Indigenous authors - including Jeannette Armstrong, Joseph Boyden, Dionne Brand, Timothy Findley, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Gabrielle Roy, and many others - who witness, question, dismantle, and reconstruct the functioning of time in their works. As the first comprehensive study of the cultural politics of time in Canada, Timing Canada develops foundational principles of critical time studies and everyday temporal literacy, and demonstrates how time functions broadly as a tool of power, privilege, and imagination within a multicultural and multi-temporal nation.
Reviews
“Timing Canada presents a remarkable reimagining of CanLit that goes beyond a thematic reconsideration of texts by offering a new heuristic to imagine the flow of transnational, transcultural influences into and around Canadian society and literature. Combining philosophical, religious, economic, and poetic conceptions of time, Huebener deftly applies this rubric to reveal how the cultural politics of time underpins Canadian literary imaginations.” - Gabrielle Roy Prize jury
"A broad range of historical, philosophical, political, artistic, technological, and advertising sources inform Huebener's rich analysis." Canadian Literature