Immunize-Nation: Hollywood Contagion and the Biopolitics of the Canadian Nation-Building Project

Abstract

This exploratory essay investigates the fruitfulness of thinking about the intersection of fears of contagion and the construction of national cultural boundaries in relation to cultural nationalist discourse in general and to the specific Canadian nation-building project. It begins by tracing the rise of biopolitical discourses on contagion in the 19 th century, explores how these discourses took on a moral-cultural character with the rise of fears of "moral contagion" and "moral degeneracy" and demonstrates how the latter fears were central to early formulations of the cultural policy/media literacy apparatus in the Victorian period. It then investigates how this Victorian fear of cultural contagion continues to animate contemporary Canadian cultural policy discourse and, through a reading of some of the Heritage Minutes, contemporary Canadian cultural nationalist texts.