Wayde Compton Clip 4
Details
Wayde Compton Clip 4
Metadata (MODS) |
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| Titles | Wayde Compton Clip 4: |
| Name | Wayde Compton |
| Name | Dr. Joanne Leow |
| Type of Resource | sound recording |
| Identifier | Interview |
| Identifier | Wayde Compton Clip 4 |
| Abstract | In this final clip of the interview, Compton discusses the nature of the conclusion to The Outer Harbour. It then shifts to a discussion of land claims and diasporic and Indigenous politics, and the experience of writing within such a political landscape. |
| Extent | 4:56 Minutes |
| Form | sound recording |
| Note | Joanne Leow: I want to talk a little bit about the ending of the book. The ending of the book, to me, is really sort of enigmatic but also hopeful, in a sense, right. So, you have the insurgent, the refugee, and the composite, those three figures on the boat, and I wanted to ask you why those three, and what sort of new, maybe, inhabitations of space do you think the book is trying to like, sort of, work towards? It feels very enigmatic and tentative, but at the same time trying to say something about that grouping of the three and their arrival. 0:31 [thump at 1:05 Wayde Compton: I think those three characters, kind of like the other experiences of the island, the way the island goes through different…has different meanings for different groups, and over time—the book spans twenty-five years—and so over time, the island is used different ways. And I thought those characters were like different…people have different interactions with the island. So Fletcher comes from the small movement that was trying to claim the island as Native land, right, and then it becomes a condo, the condo becomes a detention center after this economic collapse, and so the migrant girl is there too. It’s almost a little bit gothic in a way, right, because it, it occurred to me late in the project where I thought, “it’s almost a haunted house or a haunted condo (laughs) project” at a certain point. But the way hauntings are these kind of resonances of different people and different relationships to that space that had existed in the past, and so I thought they’re kind of this layering of three, three different people who are marginal, who’ve already had a kind of relationship to this place through repression. But for the composite, who’s a little bit different, right, the composite comes in and almost uses it as a sort of, you know, underground railroad type thing, like, they get away from their creation as part of this repressive technology, and they kind of—I imagine breaking free of it and having their own identity, and then teaming up with these ghosts. And it’s also sort of the future, too, and I like the idea that…the composite’s really interesting, because they’re a creation of, of this authoritarian, kind of response, right, or the authoritarian corporation, really, and yet they, they’re not stuck there. That you can be created out of this um very nefarious sort of background or reason, but become something good and break out of it and be your own kind of consciousness, just like people. 2:53 Joanne Leow: Yeah, it makes me think of Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto. Basically, the cyborg that is the, yeah, the new hope. One last question maybe. We started the interview thinking about land claims in the context of an imaginary new island, and obviously it’s called Pauline Johnson Island for a reason, you’re writing back to that particular story as well. What’s it like thinking about it—thinking about diasporic politics, but then also thinking about Indigenous politics in the same—sort of holding those two things in one book at the same time, aware of all the tensions and contradictions and complexities and sensitivities around that. What was that like for you writing it and sort of expressing yourself through it? 3:34 Wayde Compton: I think that that’s another reason why it ends with those characters as ghosts, and then the sort of future form, is because—and that it ends on that sentence saying, “discuss what it means to regroup,” and I think it’s because we don’t have the answer to resolve those contradictions right now. The idea of people of colour who come from outside the continent, or whose origins are beyond here, but come here, are victims of white supremacy and survive it, and then also Indigenous people who have a completely different experience but with some parallels, like that relationship, I think, is a very fertile one, but I don’t think we’ve figured it out yet. And how we come from colonized countries to a colonized country, and are in some ways settlers, but in other ways might—could be allies to those who are colonized here. That’s an abstract idea and sometimes that works, but I don’t think we’ve figured it out yet. So, in a way, that’s why I leave it as something to come after here, and it’s something…it’s slipping further into the strange, because it’s not a concrete that I can point to very easily, if that makes sense. |
| Access Condition | Contact Dr. Joanne Leow |
| Subject Topic | Low-- |
| Subject Topic | -- |
| Subject Topic | Advertisement-- |
| Subject Topic | Language-- |
| Subject Topic | Power-- |
| Subject Topic | Manipulation-- |
| Subject Topic | Government |
| Subject Hierarchical Geographic | North America--Canada------Vancouver |
| Subject Local Name | Low----Advertisement--Language--Power--Manipulation--Government---- |