Surreptitious Spaces of Citizenship: Through a Canadian Fictional Prism

Abstract

"This article examines the spaces of actions often coded as structural, systemic and transpersonal in the determinations of citizenship in a nation space. Whereas the institutions that regulate civil, political and social belonging often come across as impersonal entities, these regulating organs reflect the attitudes of the individuals whose opinions dominate the respective spaces. Esi Edugyan’s novel The Second Life of Samuel Tyne (2004) depicts realms of influences in which the individual, the family, the town, the nation and trans-national spaces are mutually constitutive and interrogative spheres that invent and control citizenship."