Abstract: Much has been made of the Harper Conservative’s multifaceted efforts to advance a Canadian historical narrative based on conservative values, rather than the liberal values that came to define the Canadian political community in the 20th century. The Harper Conservative’s have challenged the colony-to-nation narrative that, since Pearson and Trudeau, has defined Canada as a liberal internationalist nation committed to bilingualism, multiculturalism, and liberal equality rights at home, while playing a middle power peacekeeping role on the international stage. Critics have examined changes to Canada’s citizenship guide, the Canadian state’s increased emphasis on military history, the purposeful reclaiming of our ties to the monarchy, and Canada’s bolder and more aggressive stance on the world stage, including unwavering support of Israel, engagement with the war against terrorism, and questioning of the value of multilateralist institutions. This paper aims to assess this agenda as a cultural and electoral project. To what extent is there a coherent project? What is this project’s connection to Canada’s evolving political community and culture, is it leading, following, or misrepresenting? How is it related to the Conservative electoral project?

Abstract: Memory studies scholars demonstrate that memory is work. Via a qualitative analysis of Stephen Harper’s public memorialization of the War of 1812, I ask, if memory is work, what are the fruits of this labour? What does contemporary state memory work do? And what does this work mean for Canadian national identity and citizenship? I use affect theory and critical-race theories of citizenship and national belonging to guide a discourse analysis of speeches, websites, monuments, and media texts. I read these texts against counter-memories of colonial and racist violence, situating past in present in order to construct a genealogy of state memorialization of 1812. In doing so, I demonstrate that, contra to extant Canadian Political Science readings of Harper’s 1812 narrative, this large scale public memorialization is not merely an attempt to perpetuate a white, warrior national identity, but to narrate a new origin story. This story is one of Canada not as the result of colonialism – but as the result of collaboration between the English, French, Indigenous peoples, and women. By portraying 1812 as the reason Canada exists, Harper not only erases past and present colonization but goes a step further by portraying Indigenous peoples as participants in Canada’s formation. Combining affect theory, critical-race theory, genealogical, and governmentality approaches, I argue that this sort of state memory work is a form of affective governance which aims to constitute a loving citizen-subject whose object of affection is a white nation.

Abstract: "Before the intensification of the government’s rhetoric during the 2015 election campaign concerning niqabs, its inadequate response to the Syrian refugee crisis highlighted by photos of deceased three year old Syrian Aylan Kurdi on a beach in Turkey, and references to “old stock Canadians” while misleading the public on health cuts for refugee claimants, in many media and academic circles the Conservative Party of Canada had been praised for their approach to citizenship and immigration and their “ethnic outreach” efforts. However these instances represented an intensification of longstanding discourses and practices by the Conservative Party that had long been prevalent in citizenship and immigration policy. Primarily focusing on their record in citizenship and multiculturalism, this paper employs the work of Stuart Hall on Thatcherism and the concept of Kenneyism to seek to help answer the question of how one reconciles the party’s simultaneous outreach efforts to many new, ethnicized and racialized Canadians while implementing highly exclusionary policies in many realms of citizenship and immigration. It addresses both adaptations of the party to a popular consensus in favour of multiculturalism, alongside the regressive form of nationalism being promoted in these fields, which this author labels a form of neoconservative multiculturalism. Kenneyism is not solely about the politics of a single Minister in a single government, but rather the trends in the form and substance of politics that can be fairly included under the label, and are likely to prove a long term model for the party and draw international interest."