| Informed by Michel Foucault's conceptualizations of power and a Derridean ethos of deconstruction, this dissertation examines how Canadian national identity is constructed through the discourses and practices of security policy. By analysing Canadian responses to illicit drugs, the power relations that are present in the construction of threat, and the meanings that are attached to the illicit drug issue, it is demonstrated that these are all reflective of and reflected in the dominant understandings of what/who can be defined as Canadian.; In taking a critical look at the discursive relations that transect discussions of race, culture, identity, medicine, law, and security within specific case studies, I map the popular representations that emerge which have reproduced a regime of truth that frames specific drugs as requiring prohibition and illicit drugs as a security issue writ large. By focussing on illicit drugs, an area of public security policy that is constructed as being above politics, I reveal the interconnected relationship between security and identity by evaluating the performatives of Canadian identity and threat, the forms of marginalization that they make possible, and their ethico-political ramifications for the Canadian body politic.; The empirical case studies include an assessment of the biopolitics of Canada-US relations, a comparison of the processes by which the securitization of opium and khat became possible and their relationship to discourses of race, a genealogy of the body of the 'Canadian' drug user which explores the power relations constitutive of medical marijuana and proposed moves towards the decriminalization of marijuana possession, and a discussion of the politics of resistence utilized by Toronto's rave community after being identified as a threat by law enforcement authorities and why its strategy ultimately failed.; Concluding reflections are provided on the categorization of Canadian illicit drug policy as progressive, the reproduction of power/relations in Canadian society, the kind of politics that these make possible, and prospects for transformation. As such, identity management is argued to be a central element of Canadian security policy that frames the ways in which the Canadian Self responds to its Others beyond issues directly related to illicit drugs. |
