Cautiously Hopeful: Metafeminist Practices in Canada. Marie Carrière. Montreal, Que., and Kingston, Ont.: McGill-Queens University Press, 2020 (ISBN 978-0-2280-0422-6)

Abstract

In Cautiously Hopeful: Metafeminist Practices in Canada, Marie Carrière introduces herself and her project: "I am a feminist setting out to decipher and depict the internal and external plurality of feminism, as well as the sometimes messy, paradoxic metadimension and metaconciousness of feminism today and its fundamental intervention in our neoliberal, late capitalist, unevenly globalized, patriarchal, colonial and androcentric times" (15). For Carrière, feminism "is the belief in gender and racial equality and in the importance of lives of all women, Indigenous people, racialized individuals, and other socially marginalized groups" (10). Carrière's project weaves together four threads: a review of major debates and currents in metafeminist writings and practices in Canada; an in-depth examination of some of the key literary writings; an experimental writing style that both challenges academic conventions and makes more viable engagements with contemporary literary works; and her cautiously hopeful insights into feminist possibilities for more equitable social change. As a professor of English and director of the Canadian Literature Centre at the University of Alberta, Carrière offers insights into the ways in which feminism is articulated in literature and the ways in which such literature offers hope for contemporary feminism.The book is organized around a review of what Carrière considers the major debates and currents in metafeminist writings and practices in Canada. Metafeminism is a reading practice of feminist writings that draws on and builds on earlier works and offers new insights and visions for current and future practices. She starts by insisting that "if a sort of internal messiness has always characterized feminism, then metafeminism provides a critical understanding and terminology, and transforms it into an always intersectional praxis that remains self-aware of its past, present, and possible futures" (6). She identifies the core elements of feminist thought today: "Intersectionality (the analysis of race, gender, and other overlapping elements of social oppression), alliances, affect theory, ethics of care, and feminism's own internal differences" (6-7).Carrière's most important contribution in this text is an in-depth examination of some of the key literary writings: Anglo-Canadian, Indigenous and Quebeçois texts. It provides readers with a thoughtful evaluation of an impressive range of literary writing. It may well introduce many readers to impressive writings by authors they haven't yet read. Carrière notes that these three genres are often considered distinct; instead, this text examines their periodic engagements and their often-shared interests. In one of the most compelling aspects of this book, she shows the potential strength of bringing them into conversation with one another, while also showing the writers' engagements with