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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2019

“Learning from the “Dish With One Spoon”

Claire Omhovère

Résumé

The subtitle of Daniel Coleman’s third book of non-fiction acknowledges in place the existence of a form of life and agency that the essay explores in exquisite detail. The living under scrutiny begins in the yard at the back of the Colemans’ house in Hamilton, the industrial city on the western tip of lake Ontario where the Canadian critic and writer has made his home. The plasticity of the essay, a prospective, tentative form by definition, means that it is a most suited genre to try out new propositions regarding the practice of place in an area that used to be known as a “Dish With One Spoon” by the Indigenous populations who had agreed to preserve it as a neutral ground for their common use before the onset of colonisation. After the arrival of European settlers, the region underwent profound transformations culminating with the industrial boom that boosted the development of the city of Hamilton while causing great damage to its environment. The area is presently showing signs of ecological resilience that may lead to a renaissance with the waning of the industrial age. Although the timeline matters, Coleman is not writing a history of place. His approach is more foulcauldian in spirit, looking at the languages, discourses and practices that have constituted a geography into a place, i.e. a portion of space imbued with signification for its human inhabitants, but also a milieu shared by a myriad life-forms. In this presentation, I propose to analyse the decentering Yardwork operates from the ego-centered genre of the biography to a form of writing which is eco-centered, by which I mean that it is rooted in an ontology where conviviality serves as challenging model to help us rethink the usage of life-giving places.
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Dates et versions

hal-04311292 , version 1 (28-11-2023)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04311292 , version 1

Citer

Claire Omhovère. “Learning from the “Dish With One Spoon”: Conviviality and Ecological Resilience in Daniel Coleman’s Yardwork: A Biography of an Urban Place. Echoing Ecologies, Marburg Centre for Canadian Studies, May 2019, Marburg / Lahn, Germany. ⟨hal-04311292⟩

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