Knots and Knowledges: The Canadian West, Settler Colonial Intimacies, and Aritha Van Herk’s Calgary Stampede

This paper explores the intimacies of settler colonial cultures in discourses
about the Canadian West. In a critical regionalist reading, it positions the region
between centrist and continental frameworks, Canadian variations of the West-
ern myth, and Albe rta’s revived struggle for cultural and political independence
from the nation state. A case in point is the annual celebration of the Calgary
Stampede , a Western Show and carnival. After addressing Stampede’s
lar production of Western culture, I r evisit the event through the oeuvre of Aritha
van Herk, whose 2017 prose poetry collection Stampede and the Westness of
West views Western intimacies from a white feminist perspective. By reading two
of her texts, I show how van Herk attempts to ensnare th e rodeo cowboy and his
audience in a synaesthetic of looking and feeling that unsettles white male
Western cultural hegemonies.