Canadian political memoir: The burgeoning years.

摘要

This project analyzes the tradition of political memoir in Canada and the changing conditions of its cultural production throughout the last century. The genre's popularity indicates that political memoirs are active, public sites of political discussion. The genre's popularity also points to the importance of personal narrative in contemporary culture to contextualize public figures and public life. As such, political memoir serves as a cultural reflection of media-centric democratic practices in electoral politics and reflects the role of the politician as both cultural celebrity and commodity in Canada.;Finally, this project asserts that women possess a different relationship to the practice and the genre of political memoir than men. Women's political memoirs often reflect women parliamentarians' continual struggle to negotiate their gendered identities in a changing, yet still masculinist political system. Women's political memoirs both reflect but also complicate feminist auto/biographical theory and practices while providing a critical analysis of legislatures as gendered spaces.;This project examines the tradition of Prime Ministerial memoirs in Canada, specifically those of former Prime Ministers John Diefenbaker, Lester Pearson, Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney, and Jean Chretien. It examines the construction and production of these former Prime Ministers as auto/biographical subjects and historical figures through the auto/biographical practice of ghostwriting, the use of multiple medias (photography, text, and film), and through the development of the subjects as commodities and cultural celebrities in the public sphere.