“Significant Otherness” versus Othering in Marian Engel’s Bear
Abstract This article explores Marian Engel’s portrayal of what Animal Studies scholar Donna J. Haraway terms “significant otherness” (the simultaneous interconnection and mysterious difference between animal and human life/connections) and othering as a form of dismissal and a perpetuation of colonial hierarchies of gendered and racial power. I explore the overlaps of Engel’s othering of Indigenous characters in the novel and the racism present in speciesism, exposing why the character of the bear is more knowable to the protagonist than Lucy Leroy (Cree). I offer a decolonial reading of this seminal Canadian text, drawing on Engel’s desire to disrupt literary utilization of animals as images of nationalism and emblems of patriotic virtue, while simultaneously exposing the prevalence of entrenched gendered and racial hierarchical perceptions of Indigenous women and relationships to nature. In offering this reading, I hope to suggest that decolonial readings offer us the tools to integrate the ideals expressed in Haraway’s “significant otherness” reading of companion-animal relationships with decoloniality and the deconstruction of hierarchies of power as pioneered by Indigenous authors, artists, and activists. This generates hope.
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Roberts, Gillian. “Writing Settlement after Idle No More: Non-Indigenous Responses in Anglo-Canadian Poetry.” Journal of Canadian Studies, vol. 51, no. 1, Winter 2017, pp. 64-89.
Rose, Deborah Bird. “Val Plumwood’s Philosophical Animism: Attentive Interactions in the Sentient World.” Environmental Humanities, no. 3, 2013, pp. 93-109.
Sangster, Joan. “Creating Popular Histories: Re-interpreting ‘Second Wave’ Canadian Feminism.” Dialect Anthropology, no. 39, 2015, pp. 381-404.
Verduyn, Christl. Lifelines: Marian Engel‘s Writings. McGill-Queen’s UP, 1995.
Wolfe, Cary. “Old Orders for New: Ecology, Animal Rights, and the Poverty of Humanism.” Diacritics, vol. 28, no. 2, 1998, pp. 21-40.
Adams, Carol. The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory. Continuum, 1990.
Ahmed, Sara. “Making Feminist Points.” Feminist Killjoys Blog, 2013, https://feministkilljoys.com/2013/09/11/making-feminist-points/.
Aguila-Way, Tania. “Beyond the Logic of Solidarity as Sameness: The Critique of Animal Instrumentalization in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing and Marian Engel’s Bear.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol. 23, no. 1, Winter 2016, pp. 5-29.
Barrett, Paul. “‘Animal Tracks in the Margin’: Tracing the Absent Referent in Marian Engel’s Bear and J. M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals.” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, vol. 45, no. 3, pp. 123-49.
“Bear Mother.” The Bill Reid Centre: Simon Fraser University, https://www.sfu.ca/brc/imeshMobileApp/imesh-art-walk-/bear-mother.html.
Bergland, Renée L. The National Uncanny: Indian Ghosts and American Subjects. Dartmouth College P, 2015.
Davidson, Robert. “Child of Mouse Woman, by Robert Davidson.” Moedhart Gallery, 2016, https://moedhart.com/portfolio-items/child-of-mouse-woman-robert-davidson/.
Engel, Marian. “A Conversation with Marian Engel. Interview by Carrol Klein.” Room of One’s Own, special issue on Marian Engel, vol. 9, no. 2, June 1984, pp. 5-30.
Engel, Marian. Bear. Daunt Books, 2021.
Evans, Gwyneth. “Mouse Woman and Mrs Harris.” Canadian Children’s Lierature/Littérature canadienne pour la Jeunesse, no. 31-32, 1983, pp. 53-62.
Fiamengo, Janice, editor. Other Selves: Animals in Candian Literary Imagination. U of Ottawa P, 2007.
Goldie, Terry. Fear and Temptation: The Image of the Indigene in Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Literatures. McGill-Queen’s UP, 1989.
Guth, Gwendolyn. “(B)othering the Theory: Approaching the Unapproachable in Bear and Other Realistic Narratives.” Other Selves: Animals in Canadian Literary Imagination, edited by Janice Fiamengo, U of Ottawa P, 2007, pp. 29-49.
Haraway, Donna. “The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness.” Manifestly Haraway, edited by Donna Haraway, U of Minnesota P, 2016, pp. 91-199.
“Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,” Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015, http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/File/Findings/Exec_Summary_2015_05_31_web_o.pdf. Accessed 15 Nov. 2022.
Howells, Coral Ann. “Marian Engel’s ‘Bear’: Pastoral, Porn, and Myth.” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, vol. 17, no. 4, 1986, pp. 105-14.
Huggan, Graham, and Helen Tiffin. “Green Postcolonialism.” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, vol. 9, no. 1, 2007, pp. 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698010601173783.
Mackey, Eva. The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada. U of Toronto P, 2002.
Martin, Keavy. Stories in a New Skin: Approaches to Inuit Literature. U of Manitoba P, 2012.
Monk, Patricia. “Engel’s Bear: A Furry Tale.” Atlantis, vol. 5, no. 1, 1979, pp. 29-39.
Nickel, Sarah. “Reconsidering 1969: The White Paper and the Making of the Modern Indigenous Rights Movement.” The Canadian Historical Review, vol. 100, no. 2, June 2019, pp. 223-38.
Oppermann, Serpil. “Theorizing Ecocriticism: Toward a Postmodern Ecocritical Practice.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol. 13, no. 2, 2006, pp. 103-28.
Ore, Jonathan. “Why the classic Canadian novel Bear remains controversial – and relevant.” CBC Radio, 9 Jan. 2021, www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/why-the-classic-canadian-novel-bear-remains-controversial-and-relevant-1.5865107.
Plumwood, Valerie. “Decolonizing Relationships with Nature.” Decolonizing Nature: Strategies for Conservation in a Post-Colonial Era, edited by William H. Adams and Martin Mulligan, Earthscan, 2003, pp. 51-78.
—. Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason. Routledge, 2002.
Polk, James. Wilderness Writers: Ernest Thompson Seton, Charles G. D. Roberts, Grey Owl. Clarke, Irwin, 1972.
Roberts, Gillian. “Writing Settlement after Idle No More: Non-Indigenous Responses in Anglo-Canadian Poetry.” Journal of Canadian Studies, vol. 51, no. 1, Winter 2017, pp. 64-89.
Rose, Deborah Bird. “Val Plumwood’s Philosophical Animism: Attentive Interactions in the Sentient World.” Environmental Humanities, no. 3, 2013, pp. 93-109.
Sangster, Joan. “Creating Popular Histories: Re-interpreting ‘Second Wave’ Canadian Feminism.” Dialect Anthropology, no. 39, 2015, pp. 381-404.
Verduyn, Christl. Lifelines: Marian Engel‘s Writings. McGill-Queen’s UP, 1995.
Wolfe, Cary. “Old Orders for New: Ecology, Animal Rights, and the Poverty of Humanism.” Diacritics, vol. 28, no. 2, 1998, pp. 21-40.
Hughes, C. (2023). “Significant Otherness” versus Othering in Marian Engel’s Bear. Canada and Beyond: A Journal of Canadian Literary and Cultural Studies, 12, 41–62. https://doi.org/10.14201/candb.v12i41-62
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