Andrea Monike Fatona
Where Outreach Meets Outrage: Racial Equity at the Canada Council for the Arts (1989 -1999), examines the early formation of racial equity policies at The Canada Council for the Arts. In this research project, I am primarily interested in understanding the ways in which 'culture' is employed by the state, the Canada Council for the Arts and by black artists to articulate and communicate complex issues that pertain to notions of art, citizenship, solidarity, justice, multiculturalism, belonging and nationhood. The research places culture and cultural production centrally within claims and calls by racialized artists for the ethical redistribution of societal resources and participation in societal structures. I look at questions of how community is produced and struggled over in relation to claims for cultural resources. This thesis employs an interdisciplinary approach drawn from the disciplines of sociology, anthropology and critical cultural studies to allow the complex relationships between activities of the Canadian state, racial equity policy making at the Canada Council, and grass roots social activism to emerge. I argue that state practices of management are elastic and that racial equity policies at the Canada Council emerged out of a confluence of transformational activities simultaneously taking place at the state/institutional and grassroots levels.
The significance of this research project is that it fuses contemporary cultural production and art within contemporary social justice paradigms that seek to understand the processes and practices within liberalism that produce oppressions and resistance through an exclusionary politics of representation. This dissertation study will have both applied and theoretical implications in the Canadian context both within and outside of the academy in the fields of the arts, cultural policy and education.
My sincere gratitude to my supervisor Dr. Rinaldo Walcott whose support, intellectual prowess and belief in my work enabled me to bring this project to fruition. His commitment to the study of black Canada is an inspiration to me. I am truly grateful to Dr. Kari Dehli who has guided and supported me since my first day at OISE. A big thank you to Dr. Roger Simon for pushing me to reach past my conclusions. To Dr. Ruben Guztambide-Fernandez, I extend special thanks for the generosity you brought to our conversations and to the work. I must also thank Monika Kin Gagnon for her support and feedback. Your keen insights helped to shape and strengthen the work. Thanks also to my external examiner Dr. Shelia Petty for her thorough and careful engagement with the thesis and for her thought-provoking questions. This thesis would not have been possible without the insights and reflections of the interview participants who contributed to this project. Your contributions are invaluable to my growth and understanding of race politics, the arts and culture in Canada.
The support of my friends and colleagues in the department has been invaluable to the maintenance my sanity throughout this process. To Carrianne Leung, Darryl Leroux, Eve Haque, Mark Campbell and Lyndon Philip, I say, ―thank you!‖ I am also indebted to the Interrogating the African Diaspora crew of 2004 for providing fertile ground for the critical exploration of black diasporic expressions.
Without the assistance of Kristine Ann Pearson, Margaret Brennan and Mary MacDonnell, I would still be lost in the maze of the bureaucracy of the institution. Special thanks to Pierette Chabot for providing me with access to materials at the Canada Council for the Arts Documentation Centre. Thanks to Line Dezainde for technical support. I am grateful to Richard Pinet, Catalina Motta, Otis Fatona-Pinet for their patience, understanding and support. A big thank you to Angela Robertson for her support, well-timed distractions and for ‗seeing‘ me. Most importantly, my heartfelt gratitude to all those activists and cultural producers who came before me and whose work provided the conditions for me to do this work. This project was supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).