The Rhetoric of Culture: Some Notes on Magazines,Canadian Culture and Globalization

Abstract

Through an examination of the government's most recent attempt to defend the Canadian magazine industry (Bill C-55), this essay considers the politics of defending Canadian culture in the era of globalization. It argues that the defence of Canadian culture cannot be taken as synonymous with the defence of ways of life that are opposed to the profit-driven logic of global capitalism. Rather, struggles over Canadian culture can impede our understanding of Canada's place in globalization by distracting us from the real issues. This is shown in the defence of the Canadian magazine industry on the grounds of its importance to national culture. Magazines are exemplary mass cultural commodities whose form and content both express the consumerist values of contemporary capitalism. This paper argues that worries about Canadian content are often articulated at the expense of a more general examination of the function of culture within capitalism and of the implicit politics of the forms of mass culture.