Unarrested Archives: Case Studies in Twentieth-Century Canadian Women’s Authorship by Linda M. Morra

Abstract

Linda M. Morra. Unarrested Archives: Case Studies in Twentieth-Century Canadian Women's Authorship. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 2014. 244 pp. $29.95. Linda Morra opens the first case study of Unarrested Archives by describing an enticing archival lead that suddenly went cold: the material in question was simply missing from the fonds. This anecdote epitomizes Morra's own approach to the cultural politics of archives. That is, she doesn't shy away from the gaps and peculiarities of the record but instead highlights the circumstances that affect the formation and reformation of particular archives over time, especially as women writers have negotiated their presence in public and for posterity. Morra situates her contribution in terms of theory generally (including engagement with Foucault and Derrida) and scholarship on Canadian women writers' archives more specifically, to which she has already made an important contribution (Morra, Rule). As the book's title indicates, she develops terminology around arrest/unarrest that provides a conceptual framework for her analyses. Beginning with Derrida's discussion of the etymology of archive which evokes documents that would have been under house arrest in a magistrate's home, Morra plays with the varied definitions of arrested to situate different archives and their resonances. The unarrested is non-institutionalized--but archived material might also be unarrested as it is mobilized by researchers. As she deploys these terms, arrest/unarrest is not a staid binary; rather, it provides vocabulary for addressing the creation and uses of archives in very different circumstances. In other words, this terminology is productive because Morra exploits its slipperiness. It provides a continuity to the volume, as do the recurring themes of feminist self-agency, the national imaginary, institutional frameworks, and archival formation. Organized chronologically, the five case studies that make up the monograph draw on archival material that spans more than a century. The first case study uses Diane Taylor's concept of scenario to offer a critical repositioning of Pauline Johnson's public performances, particularly A Cry from an Indian Wife. The chapter is a wonderful combination of historical contextualization and innovative close reading that explores gaps in Johnson's arrested archive, as well as her on-stage transgressions of gender, race, and class norms. The second chapter draws on Judith Butler's notion of kinship to discuss how Emily Carr navigated her reliance on Ira Dilworth to legitimate her writings in the public sphere. In its discussion of Carr's Klee Wyck and Growing Pains, the chapter reflects on the masculinist underpinnings of the genre of autobiography and the extent to which Carr's narratives subvert those assumptions. The following chapter also traces a writer's recourse to male authority to manage her writings: this time, Sheila Watson's interactions with Fred Flahiff. Here, Morra suggests the especial collaborative nature of research in this particular archive: Watson deposits fonds with gaps (or imminence) that lend themselves to future unarresting by researchers. …