Every year
the CBC holds a week-long radio debate on five books selected as the most
significant published in Canada during the previous year. This year one of the
finalists was The Right to Be Cold by Sheila
Watt-Sloutier. It was eliminated in the third round. What is interesting
is the argument presented by the debater who broke the tie to eliminate it: “My
mom says it has too much information.”
It is a
book that presents itself as a memoir of an Inuit women who grew to become an
international spokesperson for the Inuit peoples of the polar region (five
countries where the Inuit live, including Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Russia).
What lies
behind “mom’s” comment is, I believe, an inability to move beyond the concept
of a singular individual presenting a memoir to the collective memoir of a
people. It is a specific inability of our modern Western culture that is
becoming more and more evident – and pathological.
While the
idea of the individual as an important centre of attention, came into its own
through the time of the Enlightenment in Europe, the earlier period in Europe
as also among Indigenous peoples throughout human history has been much more
collective. The inability of many at this time to place themselves in this
latter framework is one of the important reasons why we are increasingly unable
to deal with global issues.
