THE SYMBOLIC EMPIRE AND THE HISTORY OF RACIAL-INEQUALITY

Historiography is routinely employed to support contemporary accounts of racial inequality. Subjecting Khan's (1991) exploration of the hist ory of East Indians' in Canada (1903-47) to critical analysis this art icle argues that 'empire' is used as a narrative and symbolic device. But the symbolic empire is a constrained analytic tool which can only produce a circumscribed account of race and a limited form of race pol itics. By substituting the symbolic empire with an empire invoked as a n administrative device, registered in political discourses, the symbo lic empire becomes two nationhoods-in-process. These two very differen t nation-building processes, one Indian the other Canadian, are connec ted. The Canadian nation was constructed as a white enterprise in a de fensive action against the immigration of East Indians who were concur rently awarded a second-class citizenship by Britain. This article sho ws how the Canadian discourse on alien immigrants was a device used to affirm its own (white) identity. It shows how the historical themes o f exclusion and marginalization may be mobilized to develop a form of race politics in the present.