A border within

national identity, cultural plurality, and wilderness

de Ian H. Angus

Border Within addresses the question of English Canadian identity by exploring how unity is possible in the presence of a plurality of discourses. Ian Angus examines the relationship between globalizing social movements and the particularities of identity politics by extending the theories of Harold Innis and George Grant. Grant and Innis, argues Angus, provide a critique of homogenization that is the key to meeting the challenges of developing a new relationship with the natural world and of forging a new multicultural society. Angus breaks down the superficial oppositions that have been the traditional touchstones of discussions of Canadian identity - the Garison and the Wilderness, colony and empire, Canada and the U.S., the Self and the Other - in favour a view that does justice to the complex intertwining of identity and difference. In doing so he not only opens the way to a new understanding of the politics of identity in English Canada and the creation of a theory of Canadian social identity as postcolonial, particularistic, and pluralist, he also makes an elegant and passionate plea for reintegrating philosophy into public discourse.