| Using the sankofa archival praxis, this thesis seeks to recover the unknown periodicals of Quebec's largest urban area and Canada's second largest. This qualitative research examines 196 Black periodicals published in Greater Montreal, from 1934 to the present. As a case study of Black-controlled serialized literature it includes: journals, newspapers, magazines, directories, bulletins, and newsletters. This thesis seeks to capture, organize, and catalogue a comprehensive checklist of Montreal's Black serials.; Despite the scores of Black publications produced in the last seventy years, the vast majority of the 196 titles located are unknown to Black readers within Montreal, Quebec. While this thesis assumes that the silence of these documents is intricately linked to the marginalized status of Blacks within Canada as a whole, and Quebec in particular, it focuses upon the context of the serials' evolution, their concomitant invisibility within the Black community of Montreal and the national and urban context of these documents. The research does not ask why this body of literature is unknown to the general populace, but rather, why Blacks themselves, as creators, that is, the Black owners, journalists, and editors of the serials, are unaware of the existence of these serials. This dissertation explores the extent to which four factors may have contributed to the invisibility of these serials in Canada and in particular in the unique setting of Montreal: language, ethnicity, orality and the treatment of documents.; These factors are framed from two general perspectives. The first perspective comprises the social effects of language and ethnicity. This focus looks at the way in which language and multi-ethnicity make up, and yet divide the community, spatially and demographically. The heterogeneity of the Black diaspora is enhanced in Montreal under provincially-imposed linguistic constraints, such as the language of education, and of public discourse. This lack of homogeneity has contributed significantly to the marginalization of Black print culture by isolating clusters of Blacks within distinct linguistic enclaves. This thesis explores how the owners, editors, and journalists of Black serials perceive how the Black community's heterogeneity may have contributed to the obfuscation of their serials.; The second perspective examines the community's internal orality, and the treatment of documents is an internal analysis of how Blacks treat print culture in general, and their own print culture in particular. Their diasporic presence in Montreal is still framed by traces of its African oral tradition, or orality, the third factor. The thesis explores the extent to which this oral tradition has led to the belief within the Black community that printed documents, including periodicals, may not be the best cultural representation to express the Black presence. The treatment of the documents is an extension of orality in that, if serials are not deemed as valued storehouses of Black culture, they may be then treated with neglect and discarded without regret by their own people.; The results of these four factors-language, ethnicity, orality, and the treatment of documents-can be readily seen in the pervasive ignorance that surrounds Black serials within the Black community. The invisibility of these serials is examined and reveals to the Black communities in Montreal, for the first time, their literary contribution to the city. Only by recognizing that these serials are important repositories of the cultural, social, political, and historical evidence of the Black presence in Montreal, will there be a collective response to their collection and preservation. This thesis presents to archivists and to librarians a first glimpse of Montreal's Black serialized literature, as well as several avenues for engagement with Black collectors, historians and with the creators of this medium. |
