{"id":2187,"date":"2017-03-10T12:13:22","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T17:13:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mds\/?post_type=cu_event&p=2187"},"modified":"2025-10-02T10:37:21","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T14:37:21","slug":"cultural-ownership-copyleft-romanticism-and-the-white-possessive-critical-reflections-on-the-of-the-north-controversy","status":"publish","type":"cu_event","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mds\/event\/cultural-ownership-copyleft-romanticism-and-the-white-possessive-critical-reflections-on-the-of-the-north-controversy\/","title":{"rendered":"Cultural Ownership, Copyleft Romanticism and the White Possessive: Critical Reflections on the of the North Controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bruno Cornellier<\/a>, a Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Winnipeg<\/a>, will be visiting Carleton to discuss his current research, which critically explores the controversy triggered by screenings<\/a> of Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois filmmaker Dominic Gagnon<\/a>\u2019s found footage documentary of the North (2015). Prof. Cornellier’s talk on \u201cCultural Ownership, Copyleft Romanticism and the White Possessive: Critical Reflections on the ‘of the North’ Controversy\u201d will be held in the ICSLAC Boardroom (room 201, St Patrick’s Building) on Monday, March 13, at 11:35 am.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The event is held in conjunction with ‘Perspectives on Interdisciplinarity in Cultural Theory’, a course in the Cultural Mediations PhD program<\/a>, but all are welcome. To reserve a space, or receive further details about the talk, please contact daniel.mcneil(at)carleton.ca.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Title:<\/strong>
\nAbstract: This paper critically explores the heated controversy triggered by screenings of
\nQu\u00e9b\u00e9cois filmmaker Dominic Gagnon\u2019s found footage documentary of the North
\n(2015), in which he extracted from YouTube found clips of northern Inuit life and decay
\nthat he exalted as aesthetic capital for southern cinephile jouissance. In conversation with
\nGoenpul scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson\u2019s theorization of the white possessive, I
\npropose that the vocabulary employed by many of the Montreal-based cultural
\ninstitutions and critics defending the film against Inuit dissent and protests\u2014e.g. the
\ndemocratic imperative to protect artistic freedom and allow reasoned dialogue about
\n\u201cdifficult\u201d texts to flourish in the public sphere\u2014are inextricable from the type of
\nentitlements sustaining settler colonial claims to Indigenous lands\u2014and to Indigeneity
\nitself\u2014as part of a free and boundless Lockean common. I argue that such demand that
\nInuit relinquish their anger and participate instead in a necessary deliberative and
\nintercultural public sphere, reflects the very structure of feeling of liberal colonial
\nsettlement and reveals a certain cinephilia\u2019s subjective and material investment in the
\nwhite possessive. I end this paper by reflecting on the ways Copyleft principles and the
\nrecent return in critical theory to the Medieval concept of the commons, have been
\nsimultaneously challenged and reinvested by some Indigenous artists, activists, and legal
\nscholars, in contrast with members of a settler cultural intelligentsia on the left who often
\nrely on these notions as justificatory devices for acts of cultural appropriation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bio:<\/strong>
\nBruno Cornellier is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies in the Department of
\nEnglish at the University of Winnipeg. He is the author of La \u201cchose indienne\u201d: Cin\u00e9ma
\net politiques de la repr\u00e9sentation autochtones au Qu\u00e9bec et au Canada (Nota Bene,
\n2015). He co-edited (with Michael Griffiths) the \u201cGlobalizing Unsettlement\u201d special
\nissue of Settler Colonial Studies (2016), and co-edited (with C\u00e9cile Alduy and Dominic
\nThomas) a special issue of Occasion on \u201cThe Charlie Hebdo Attacks and Their
\nAftermath\u201d (2015). His articles also appear (or are forthcoming) in Discourse, American
\nIndian Culture and Research Journal, Settler Colonial Studies, Canadian Journal of Film
\nStudies, London Journal of Canadian Studies, and Nouvelles Vues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_event_type":[],"cu_event_audience":[],"class_list":["post-2187","cu_event","type-cu_event","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":{"cu_event_start_date":"2017-03-13T11:30:00","cu_event_end_date":"2017-03-13T13:00:00","cu_event_location_type":"in-person","cu_event_meeting_address_type":"on-campus","cu_building":"SP","cu_event_meeting_room":"Room 201","cu_event_meeting_address_full":null,"cu_event_virtual_type":"tbd","cu_event_virtual_meeting_link":"","cu_post_thumbnail":false,"cu_event_cost":"","cu_event_registration":"","cu_event_secondary_button":"","cu_event_contact_name":"","cu_event_email":"","cu_event_phone":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_event\/2187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_event"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_event"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_event\/2187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2193,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_event\/2187\/revisions\/2193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_event_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_event_type?post=2187"},{"taxonomy":"cu_event_audience","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_event_audience?post=2187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}