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Hockey and the making of Canadian identiy
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Bernt Pölling-Vocke, May 2007, berntpv@gmx.com Open / download paper as PDF-file (right click and "safe target as") : PDF-file |
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1
Of what it is all about: an introduction
Avoiding
the laborious and troublesome quest for introductorily grandeur, the
formulation of this thesis’ appropriate opening lines has been left to
the likes of Podniecks, Kidd, Macfarlane, McKinley, Dryden, MacGregor,
Gruneau and Whitson. No matter the actual heterogeneity of their
findings, these writers’ eye-catching opening phrases all assure of a
common appropriateness for a discussion of hockey within the framework
of a typical Canadian self’s selfing. In short, little appears more
natural than the apparently all-too obvious bond between puck and self. Subsequently,
this thesis’ outline will be briefly introduced. Throughout the
text’s main body, chapters consisting of multiple subsections, namely
chapters two through six, will feature separate, more elaborate
introductorily comments, explaining each subsections’ structure and
respective focus. Furthermore, many continuative elaborations have been
shifted towards numerous footnotes in order to increase this work’s
concreteness. Even though such footnoted elaborations are highly
recommendable for the interested reader, the text’s main findings are
largely comprehendible without. In
short, “Of Puck and Self” aims at a multi-layered analysis of the
complex relationship between the makings of “self” and hockey as a
supposable integral component of such Canadian manifestations and
experiences of identity, typically perceived in reference to somewhat
distinctive conceptions of place. Therefore, puck’s significance will
be analysed in regard of municipal, regional and national perceptions of
identity and belonging. What shall be questioned is not only the true
substance behind above quoted, allegedly all-encompassing assurances of
experienced commonality, but also the reasons why such assurances are
deemed highly significant, both in past and present. In
a first step, important conceptualisations necessary for puck and
self’s further discussion will be introduced in chapter two, namely
the concept of culture, its contemporary studies, sports’ significance
within and the general concept of a community’s making. Based
upon this foundation, chapter three will explain codified hockey’s
early development within an emergent Canadian nation state, including
references to the Victorian Era’s ideological framework of proper
physical recreation and gendered restrictions of such. As a modern
nation state, Canada was based upon the populace’s common willingness
to imagine the self as part of the nation’s relative and individually
unknowable arbitrariness, a willingness fostered by the invention of
popular traditions. Modern hockey quickly became one of them – as puck
met self. However, the process of its increasingly popular nation-wide
assertion was far from natural and required the unifying means of a
trophy’s quests and journeys, as will be explained. Chapter
four’s focus will rest upon the manufacture of we-ness and other-ness,
both in general terms and in reference to specific levels of imagined
identity. As the Canadian self’s assumed symbolic relation to puck
occurs on numerous, even simultaneously held or imagined senses of
we-ness, the game’s specific significance for the manufacture of
municipal, regional and national perceptions of such will be introduced. Often
purposefully enacted, such perceptions of we-ness, based upon the
currency of hockey as a means of identification among strangers, allowed
for the amassment of currency in the hands of the game’s professional
athletes and the successful sporting entrepreneur, as chapter five will
illustrate. What is more, US-based entrepreneurs appeared to take over
hockey, perceived as a threatened “Canadian specific”. An analysis
of such perceived fears of a cultural sellout will round out the chapter.
Chapter
six will focus upon a gendered analysis of hockey and this thesis’
previous findings. Firstly focusing on “him”, it will be shown what
kind of manliness it helped to promote, both historically and ever since.
Equally, it will be analysed how the game coped with the perpetual issue
of violence and how universal the experience of hockey, both for him and
her, actually is. Equally, a telling, gendered account of the nation’s
most storied mass ritual, Hockey Night in Canada, will be
introduced, opening up new perspectives for a thorough discussion of
puck and self. Do
totalising claims in regard of hockey’s cultural significance stand up
to gendered scrutiny – or not? If not, how does this alter its
cultural significance? Analysing hockey’s history, what kind of
herstory, cloaked by the amnesia of manufactured commonality, is there
to be found? Chapter
seven will focus upon the present-day issues of globalization, modernity
and subsequent practices of selfing, especially in regard of an
allegedly post-national commonality of consumed triviality. Based upon
previous conceptualisations regarding a community’s making, the
continuous existence, or non-existence, of somewhat typical national
identities will be scrutinized in the face of current world affairs. It
will be explained how the process of a self’s selfing has changed and
how individuated individuals challenge past, apparently more homogenous,
conceptualisations of imagined identity. Equally, it will be shown how
Canada has actively begun a promotion of lived diversity, commonly
perceived as a cultural en-masse empowerment by some and, in lockstep
with modernity’s core ideologies, an en-masse fostering of asociality
by others. Drawing
upon chapter seven’s conclusions, this thesis’ final chapter will
attempt to analyse what an apparently post-national and post-cultural
future holds in store for puck and self. It will be shown where and how
puck and self contemporarily meet, not only in reference to the actual,
rink-based, on- or off-ice experience, but equally in regard of its
continuous significance as a mutually shared and sporadically consumed
anchor of imagined commonality. As it is commonly claimed that
current-day Canada appears to come apart under the strains of modernity,
what truth remains in this introduction’s initial citations? Looking
backwards how puck and self have evolved, what is there to be seen
glancing forwards? [1] Podnieks, Andrew: A Canadian Saturday Night: Hockey and the culture
of a country (Greystone Books, Vancouver, Canada, 2006), page 3 [2] Kidd, Bruce and Macfarlane, John: The Death of Hockey (New Press,
Toronto, Canada, 1972), page 4 [3] McKinley, Michael: Hockey: A People’s History (Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation and McClelland & Stewart Ltd., Toronto,
Canada, 2006), page 1 [4] Dryden, Ken and MacGregor, Roy: Home Game: Hockey and Life in Canada
(McClelland & Stewart Inc., Toronto, Canada), page 9 [5] Gruneau, Richard and Whitson, David: Hockey Night in Canada: Sport,
Identities, and Cultural Politics (Garamond Press, Toronto,
Canada, 1993), page 1
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