Browsing by Author "Keren, Michael"

Now showing 1 - 12 of 12
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    Between the Lines: Canadian Foreign Correspondents and the Construction of Canada's Cold War Identity
    (2014-07-04) Steward, Gillian; Keren, Michael
    The purpose of this study was to reveal how Canadian foreign correspondents constructed a Canadian perspective in their reports on key Cold War conflicts. Four Cold War conflicts and four correspondents were selected; The Suez Crisis (1956) as reported by Peter Worthington for The (Toronto) Telegram; erection of the Berlin Wall (1961) as reported by Stanley Burke for CBC Television; the Vietnam War (1971-73) as reported by Joe Schlesinger for CBC Television; Nicaragua’s civil war (1981-1984) as reported by Oakland Ross for The Globe and Mail. With the application of critical discourse analysis the reportage revealed that there was a common, unspoken, Canadian perspective or sensibility expressed by the correspondents. Most of their reports focus on people who are victimized by the clashes between the super powers. They dwell on the people who are caught in the middle of violent Cold War conflicts over which they have very little control. Analysis also revealed that except for Worthington’s reports from The Suez Zone in 1957-58, the mention of Canada or Canadians is rare, as is the posturing by the Soviet Union and the United States, posturing that sometimes threatened to break out into nuclear war. Instead, these Canadian correspondents were more concerned about the hapless men, women and children, caught in the crossfire of the proxy wars fought by the Soviet Union, the United States, and China. Although interviews with correspondents revealed that they hadn’t given much thought to what a Canadian perspective would entail, the perspective in their reportage reflects Canada’s history and identity as a country that values surviving rather than domination. It also reflects Canada’s history as a country that often found itself caught between the demands of two super-powers – Britain and the United States. During the Cold War federal leaders sought to carve out a role for Canada in which it sought common ground with smaller nations rather than become completely subservient to the demands of its key ally – the United States. This public shunning of the U.S. is another key theme in the reports of the four foreign correspondents.
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    the Citizen's Voice: twentieth-century politics and literature
    (University of Calgary Press, 2003) Keren, Michael
    Michael Keren traces the political lives and messages of some of the twentieth century's greatest literary characters in this insightful and jargon-free book of literary criticism. Hans Castorp (Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain), Joseph K. (Franz Kafka's The Trial), John the Savage (Aldous Huxley's Brave New World), Winston Smith (George Orwell's 1984), Ralph (William Golding's Lord of the Flies), Merusault (Albert Camus's The Stranger), Ida Ramundo (Elsa Morante's History), and Chauncey Gardiner (Jerzy Kosinski's Being There) participate in ideological, technological, and organizational projects of the twentieth century. Keren observes these infamous characters' behaviours and attitudes while they struggle through world wars, the rise and fall of totalitarianism, the Holocaust, the development of the atomic bomb, de-colonization, the Cold War, and globalization. Here is a refreshing contribution to civil society theory that makes a pioneering effort to cross the boundaries between politics, literature, and culture. A study of the human condition via literature, The Citizen's Voice expounds the key features of a "good citizen" while offering a perfect discussion piece for courses in political theory, politics and literature, and history.
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    Ian McEwan: A Novel Approach to Political Communication
    (2014-09-23) Cohen, Naor; Keren, Michael
    Since authors are skilled communicators, novels can help reimagine our communicative motivations and public sphere in a contemporary context. Their fiction can situate politically-conscious narratives in pertinent, culturally salient contexts to reflect and challenge our deepest convictions. In this work I consider three novels by British author Ian McEwan, which show his liberal-communicative thought: Black Dogs, Amsterdam and Saturday. These texts exemplify his aesthetically accomplished and intellectually dense oeuvre. Each novel explores one major theme. Black Dogs addresses historical narratives, concerned with how we integrate past events into our current identities. Amsterdam challenges the notion that expert elites can achieve greatness when their actions lack moral responsibility. Saturday undermines the deterministic conception of reason and science in light of political, economic and ecological insecurity and irrationality in today’s post-9/11 world. In all three books, daily random events shatter the protagonists’ worldviews. McEwan takes a liberal-pluralist approach, representing the contingent and irrational elements challenging classic liberalism. Promoting individual autonomy, reason, and scientific progress, perfectionist liberal thinkers like John Locke and John Rawls presented fundamental moral entitlements that bind all human beings across time and place by virtue of their humanity. However, as different cultures interact, issues of legitimacy, stability and cooperation in democratic societies arise. Current political and communication theory addresses these concerns by seeking common ground from which to evaluate diverse political orders. Influenced by John Durham Peters’s ethical-political communication theory, this study sets out a theoretical framework that combines political and communicative investigations, and sees today’s liberal and communicative projects as similarly motivated. Within this space, I critically examine McEwan’s contribution to a communicative and political moral code that can guide us through the fact of pluralism. This moral code accepts the burden of reason, and the fragility of happiness in modern time, pointing to our psychological pathologies and contradictions in moral conscience. We can be skeptical about our moral, political and scientific convictions while avoiding moral relativism. We can celebrate individual autonomy, self-fulfillment and freedom of choice only if they come with empathic interest for the other. Any other possibility will diminish our greatest achievements.
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    LSD: the discourse-expanding drug
    (2006) Halasz, Shane; Keren, Michael
    This thesis argues that the discourses emanating out of and circulating around the psychedelic experience in the 1950s and 1960s represent a radical departure from traditional modern drug discourses, which are largely limited to medico-legal realms of discussion. In contrast to the clearly defined and linear manner in which rational modern drug discourses have circulated, this study finds that the revolutionary psychedelic discourse is better defined by ambiguous messages, as well as unclear sources of and destinations for information about the experience. With the advent (and ingestion) of LSD all aspects of North American "common sense" understandings of drugs were disrupted. Viewing the discourse through a phenomenologically informed lens of liberative aesthetics, it is argued that the special nature of the psychedelic experience necessitated the creation of new discursive channels and new forms of expression, out of which emerged a new, post-modern style of drug discourse.
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    Securitization Theory and the Canadian Construction of Omar Khadr
    (2018-05-18) Pirnie, Elizabeth Irene; Keren, Michael; Schneider, Barbara; Taylor, Gregory; Williamson, Janice; Huebert, Robert N.
    While the provision of security and protection to its citizens is one way in which sovereign states have historically claimed legitimacy (Nyers, 2004: 204), critical security analysts point to security at the level of the individual and how governance of a nation’s security underscores the state’s inherently paradoxical relationship to its citizens. Just as the state may signify the legal and institutional structures that delimit a certain territory and provide and enforce the obligations and prerogatives of citizenship, the state can equally serve to expel and suspend modes of legal protection and obligation for some (Butler and Spivak, 2007). This dissertation presents the case of Omar Khadr as a means of highlighting the discursive dynamics by which some threats - and some people - come to be understood under the rubric of ‘security’ and the significance of this naming as an act of national identity construction (Fierke, 2007: 103-104). Demonstrating the insights of new avenues of securitization theory research and the continued real-world relevance of the case, my research looks to the constitutive role of security discourses and constituent acquiescence in determining security realities within the context of a politically unsettled period in Canadian history: 2001 to 2005. The adoption of a securitization theory lens points to key social, historical and political discourses contributing to and challenging Omar Khadr’s nomination for ‘jettisonship’. It also leads me to find his expulsion from Canadian protections and belonging as an emergent phenomenon articulated through discourses of Canadian national identity imposed by both the Canadian state and an acquiescing citizenry. The tracing of these discourses, processes of threat construction and identity contestation present in relief an evolving security dynamic inherent to ideations of citizenship and what it means to be Canadian during a time of national and global insecurity.
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    The Diaspora Intellectual In The Age of New Media: The Case Of Tarek Fatah
    (2015-05-05) Perveen, Zahida; Keren, Michael
    This thesis explores how Diaspora intellectual Tarek Fatah has breached the boundaries of traditional media by using his Facebook profile to reach his audience in Pakistan and around the world. He challenges the religious and political discourse in Pakistan and the Islamic world in general. I have used qualitative content analysis to explore the structure and style of his themes which first appeared in his books and then on his Facebook profile. The purpose is to investigate the role and limitations of Facebook for a Diaspora intellectual as a way to transmit his messages. The study has also probed the audience reaction to some of his posts by using British scholar Stuart Hall’s theory of Coding/Decoding (1980). It is concluded that Tarek Fatah is successful in challenging the religious dogmas but the interactive nature of Facebook and his rabid style blur the logical discussion found in his books.
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    The Intellectual and Political Communication: The case of Michael Ignatieff
    (2008) Wilson, Everett Andrew; Keren, Michael
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    The intellectual in political transition
    (2005) Brotea, Julia; Keren, Michael