(Re) Producing nation at the supreme court of Canada: identity, memory, history and equality in R. v. Kapp

Identity has been described as being "one of the most appealing moral terms of our time."1 It has been construed as a foundational concept to national self-determination and as a concept that forms the basis of how both individuals and groups are defined, recognized and described. This thesis investigates the concept of identity and the diverse ways in which it makes an appearance in a 2008 Supreme Court case that revolves around the BC Pacific salmon fisheries.;Central to this study is an analysis of processes of racialization that considers colonization to be foundational to every historical moment under consideration. It highlights that the processes of racialization endemic to the discourses on equality produced in this case are inextricably linked to the gendering of the national polity. National memory passes into history and is transformed into fact through the arguments presented to and by the courts. This study concludes that through this process courts become sites of national memory where the content and meaning of people's personhood and their rights is generated preserving Lockean conceptions of identity that carry with them the residue of practices and performances of colonialism informed by the British imperial project. This process locates the causes of discrimination in individual bodies thereby reproducing the inequitable power relations that ultimately made this case possible.;Drawing on two methodological approaches taken from the field of sociolinguistics, critical discourse analysis and Foucauldian discourse analysis, this study makes problematic an otherwise unproblematic field of experience. While there is no doubt that identity and practices of identification are contested terrain in many different academic disciplines, most notably in the fields of woman, sexuality and gender studies, the question of why everyone has or needs an identity is often overlooked and is not normative in the area of Canadian constitutional equality law. This study fills that gap through the creation of a genealogy that begins with the works of John Locke, moves through a revisionist historiography of the BC Pacific salmon fisheries, the arguments presented to and by the courts in R. v. Kapp and concludes with the final Supreme Court ruling.