Peripheral visions: the dissident geographies of Farley Mowat

Abstract

Farley Mowat's stories of the Arctic and its inhabitants are a valuable model for subverting hegemonic national ideologies that obscure the experiences of subaltern populations. Images of the North and the Arctic wilderness hold a central role in Canadian national iconography, yet such images often serve to mask the realities of the northern regions. Mowat mobilizes an idealized image of the Canadian nation as a champion for human rights and ecology, as a rallying cry to redress the injustices and destruction that he witnessed during his northern travels. Mowat's work focuses a northward national gaze on the obscured peripheral space of the Arctic with hopes of bringing about changed attitudes towards the North in the southern metropolitan centres of power. His texts, which defy the constraints of form and genre, establish a liminal literary space from which he can mount a more effective challenge to institutional power and authority.