Abstracts
Abstract
Bells and carillon have long symbolized the harmonious community in Euro-American political discourse. In this article, I denaturalize this rhetorical position by taking into account the context of bells and carillon in interwar Canada. I do so by reading William Lyon Mackenzie King’s address at the inauguration of the Parliament Hill carillon within the broader context of Canada’s colonial “Old World” nostalgia for the carillon. I then turn to testimony from survivors of the residential school system to argue that the link between bells, harmony, and community had to be forcefully imposed by settlers to banish any potential discord.
Résumé
Les cloches et les carillons ont longtemps symbolisé l’harmonie de la communauté dans les discours politiques euro-américains. Cet article cherche à déconstruire cette posture rhétorique en reconsidérant les cloches et les carillons dans le contexte du Canada de l’entre-deux-guerres. Dans un premier temps, on y analyse le discours d’inauguration du carillon de la Colline Parlementaire de William Lyon Mackenzie King à travers le prisme d’une nostalgie canadienne coloniale propre à l’« ancien monde » pour le carillon. On analyse ensuite les témoignages de survivants du système canadien d’internats pour montrer que le lien entre les cloches, l’harmonie et la communauté a été fortement imposé par les colons afin d’éliminer à la source toute discorde potentielle.
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Appendices
Biographical note
Patrick Nickleson is visiting assistant professor of music history at Mount Allison University. His work focuses on the politics of authorship and historiography, especially in experimental musics, and can be found in Twentieth Century Music,New Music Box, the American Musicological Society’s “Musicology Now” blog, and forthcoming in The University of Toronto Quarterly. Nickleson is also closely engaged in the work of the philosopher Jacques Rancière and is the co-editor of Rancière and Music, forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press.
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