Material Detail

Dr. Angus was interviewed by Laureano Ralon on August 25th, 2010 as part of the Figure/Ground Communication scholarly interview series: http://www.figureground.ca/interviews/

Ian Angus is currently Professor of Humanities at Simon Fraser University. He emigrated from England to Canada in 1958 and currently lives in East Vancouver with his wife Viviana and daughter Cassandra. While an undergraduate student at the University of Waterloo in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he became involved in the politics of the New Left. While this influence has changed and developed, it has never left his work. Ian’s intellectual formation began at the same time with the 20th century European philosophies of phenomenology and the Frankfurt School of critical theory. His dissertation from the Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought at York University was revised into a first book, Technique and Enlightenment (1984) which probed the historical sources of the ‘instrumental reason’ that legitimates the modern advance of technology and argued for a form of technology assessment that is not only ethical but pertains also to the construction of human identity. A significant turn in Angus’ work occurred when he began a critical engagement with the history of English Canadian social and political thought, which resulted in A Border Within: National Identity, Cultural Plurality and Wilderness (1997), which was widely reviewed in both the academic and popular press. Ian writes on philosophy, politics, social movements, technology, communication and the university. Some of his essays are available on his web site.