Negotiated Memory: Doukhobor Autobiographical Discourse

The Doukhobors, Russian-speaking immigrants who arrived in Canada in 1899, are primarily known to the Canadian public through sensationalist images of them as nude protestors, anarchists, and religious fanatics - representations largely propagated by government commissions and the Canadian media. In Negotiating Memory, Julie Rak examines the ways in which the Doukhobors have employed autobiographical strategies to retell and reclaim their own history in the face of such images. Drawing from oral interviews, court documents, government reports, prison diaries, and journalism, Rak demonstrates how the Doukhobors used both "classic" and alternative forms of autobiography to communicate their views about communal living, vegetarianism, activism, and spiritual life, as well as to pass on traditions to successive generations. More than a historical work, this book brings together recent theories of subjectivity, autobiography, and identity, and shows how Doukhobor autobiographical discourse forms a series of ongoing negotiations for identity and collective survival which at times is successful in gaining visibility within dominant discourses of the subject, and at times is not. An innovative study, Negotiating Memory will appeal to those interested in autobiography studies, historians, literary critics, and students and scholars of Canadian cultural studies. Using aspects of cultural studies and autobiography studies, this book examines how the Doukhobors of Canada employed standard and alternative forms of autobiography to create and sustain their own subjectivity and identity.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Beyond Auto-Bio-Graphe: Autobiography and Alternative Identities 2 Doukhobor Beliefs and Historical Moments 3 Vechnaiia Pamit in the Diaspora: Community Meanings of History and Migration 4 Negotiating Identity: Doukhobor Oral Narratives 5 Witness, Negotiation, Performance: Freedomite Autobiography Conclusion: Negotiating the "I" and "We" in Autobiography Notes References Index

About the Author :
Julie Rak is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Alberta.

Review :
What Rak has written is a serious and worthwhile addition to our understanding of the way a marginalized people struggles, against all those social currents that would silence them, to find and honour a collective autobiographical voice. - Myler Wilkinson, Selkirk College (BC Studies, Spring 2005) In her methodologically ground-breaking book, Negotiated Memory, Julie Rak uses autobiographical discourse (as opposed to autobiographical genre), cultural context, and historical narrative to theorize about the relationships among the meanings of identity, place and nation…However, the book is much more than an innovative use of autobiographical discourse as a post-colonial tool useful in studying powerless groups. Negotiated Memory is also a rich cultural history of the migration and adaptation experiences of an often misunderstood religious group. - Susan W. Hardwick, Department of Geography, University of Oregon (American Review of Canadian Studies, Autumn 2005) This will be a useful and informative text for students of Canadian studies, as well as those interested in critical autobiography and identity theory ... Rak does a very good job of navigating the complex topography of Doukhobor autobiographical discourse within the Canadian historical landscape. - Vicki S. Hallett (University of Toronto Quarterly, vol. 75, no. 1, Winter 2006)