Embodied Foundations of Canadian Prairie Settler Life Writing

ABSTRACT

My paper focuses on rural diaries kept by British settlers in Alberta in the early twentieth century. I reveal how the authors’ extraordinary attention to their bodies and to the bodies of others during labor, leisure, or illness shows clearly the centrality of bodily possession in the project of homesteading in Alberta.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. I employ Althusser's concept of ideology as “a ‘Representation’ of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence” (52). Althusser states that ideology functions by “hail[ing] or interpellat[ing] concrete individuals or concrete subjects” (55).

2. For further discussion of “the agrarian myth,” see McDonald and Barnetson.

3. For a discussion of equestrian activities, see McDonald.

4. See Lejeune, On Autobiography (22). See also de Man; and Loftus.