ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasizes that all the recent hubbub about decolonization at institution and on the Canadian scene must be thought with and against the grain of a longstanding historical amnesia. It wants to underline that pedagogy within such a terrain thrives on rather than transcends the contradictions and overdeterminations within it. Anishinabe artist Rebecca Belmore's Quote, Misquote, Fact contains three pieces in which a rubbing taken from the inscription at the base of Sir John A. Macdonald's statue progressively loses words, such that in the final version of the inscription only the words "I was born/I will die" remain. The chapter elaborates upon why the nonperformatives also make squirm. Kam'ayaam/Chachim'multhnii (Cliff Atleo, Jr.)'s "Unsettling Canada: A Review" helps illuminate affective response. Peter Osborne is skeptical of this tale of woe and erosion, arguing, instead, that "English" embodies a hegemonic form of disciplinarity that incorporates new developments into a radically expanded version of its former self.
