Counter-Cartographies: Literary Wayfinding in Transnational Cities
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Counter-Cartographies: Literary Wayfinding in Transnational Cities by Joanne Chuang Ching Leow A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of English University of Toronto © Copyright by Joanne C. Leow 2015 Counter-Cartographies: Literary Wayfinding in Transnational Cities Joanne Chuang Ching Leow Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of English University of Toronto 2015 Abstract My project examines how minority literary texts from Singapore, Vancouver, and Toronto intervene in capitalist and cartographical configurations of urban space. Reading contemporary literary texts as detours in the overlapping postcolonial realities of Canada and Singapore, I demonstrate how these novels, films, poems, and short fictions resist the abstraction of these capitalist spaces, restoring sociality and human complexity. My study draws from the spatial theories of cultural geographers like Henri Lefebvre, Doreen Massey, and David Harvey, and anthropologist Timothy Ingold. Using an interdisciplinary methodology, I use the spatial tactics of wayfinding, confabulation, and indeterminacy as modes of reading literary texts. These tactics challenge cartographical understandings of urban spaces, opening them up to the prospects of unforeseen pasts, lived presents, and unpredictable futures. My readings of these texts contribute to a spatial politics that enriches our current understanding of the relationship between literature and space, the imagined and the real, the fictional and the material. My work on contemporary Vancouver and Singapore examines representations of the cities in urban planning documents, material sites, and popular media. Both urban sites began as cartographic fictions, dreamed into existence by planners and land speculators. They continue to ii be spectacularly mapped, planned, and commodified in the late capitalist period. My work places these cultural texts in dialogue with recent literary urbanisms from both cities including works by Madeleine Thien, Wayde Compton, Sachiko Murakami, Tan Shzr Ee, Tan Pin Pin and Alfian Sa’at. My project then turns to three transnational novels by Lydia Kwa, Larissa Lai, and Dionne Brand that produce a complex urban politics that goes between and beyond Singapore and Canada. These transnational counter-cartographies resist celebratory accounts of neoliberal globalization while addressing the realities of migration and diaspora through the various genres of historical fiction, immigrant narrative, and dystopian fiction. iii Acknowledgments The writing of this dissertation was supported by a Vanier Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Graduate Scholarship, an Ontario Graduate scholarship, an Avie Bennett Award, a University of Toronto Fellowship, and a Department of English award. So much gratitude is owed to my dissertation committee: Ato Quayson, Victor Li, and Karina Vernon. I would like to thank Ato for his inspirational teaching, mentorship, and generosity. Victor’s astute commentary, caring guidance, and wonderful coffeeshop conversations saw me through many a tough patch. Karina’s unwavering faith in my work, her careful reading, and her much treasured friendship have been indispensable. Thanks is also due to my internal examiner Cheryl Suzack and my external examiner David Palumbo-Liu---their generous readings of my dissertation were matched by their comprehensive and incisive critiques. Other members of the Department of English here at the University of Toronto gave their invaluable time and attention to my work. Thanks to Deidre Lynch for her initial belief in my project, Robert McGill for his input on my early thesis proposals, Andrew DuBois for his detailed comments on my work on Wayde Compton, Marlene Goldman for her attention to my chapters on Canadian Literature, and Stanka Radović, whose graduate course gave me a much needed foundation in spatial theory. My work was also aided by the impeccable administrative assistance and warm support provided by Marguerite Perry, Tanuja Persaud, Sangeeta Panjwani, Cristina Henrique and other department staff. I would also like to thank Philip Holden, Cheryl Naruse, Weihsin Gui, Mayee Wong, Nicholas Bradley, Donald Goellnicht, Lily Cho, Jenny Kerber, and Daniel Coleman for their careful engagement with my work and their friendship and encouragement. Much of this work was first delivered as conference papers, and the lively intellectual communities of Singapore literature scholars at the Modern Language Association, and the participants at the annual meetings forthe Association for Canadian and Quebecois Literatures and the Canadian Association for iv Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies gave crucial feedback on conference papers that were incorporated into my work. The editors and reviewers of Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Canadian Literature, Studies in Canadian Literature, and the Journal of Postcolonial Writing also helped to refine my writing and ideas. This dissertation could not have come about without the conversations and creative output of the artists from both Singapore and Canada. Tan Shzr Ee, Tan Pin Pin, Alfian Sa’at, Sachiko Murakami, Wayde Compton, Madeleine Thien, Larissa Lai, Lydia Kwa and Dionne Brand have all been attentive to my questions and gracious with my interpretations of their work. My friends and former colleagues in and out of Singapore: Usha Das, Sze Chan, Laura Kho, Laurel Wong, Sylvain Guilbon, Colette Wong, Luigi Ferrandi, Ken Kwek, Ernie Gao, Marilyne Chew, Wendy Loh, Debra Soon, Audrey Tan, and Suzanne Jung have always welcomed me with open arms and kept me engaged with the material realities of my literary texts. The members of the various writing groups that I have been privileged to be a part of in Toronto have kept me on track and intrigued by their own projects: in particular, Julia Cooper, Cristina D’Amico, Elissa Gurman, Tyler Pollard, and Noa Reich. I want to thank my friends in Toronto for sharing their lives and home-cooked meals. Special mention must be made of Katherine Magyarody, Phoebe Wang, Amanda Thambirajah, Rupaleem Bhuyan, Marc Clausen, Vicki Soon, Nathan Murray, Melissa Auclair, Laura Hartenberger, Katherine Schwetz, Matt Schneider, Elisa Tersigni, and everyone in the safe haven of JHB916. My in-laws Daniele Gullotti, Bina Sapienza, Lisa and Thom, my parents Lucas Leow and Josephine Phun, and my grandmother Philomen Chin have been a source of constant love and stories. Their sacrifices have enabled me to complete this work. Finally, I want to thank my sons Luca and Dante, and my husband Giuliano, to whom this culmination of five years of transnational upheaval, long days, and working summers is dedicated. I have so much gratitude for your unstinting loyalty, love, and affection—without which nothing would be possible. v Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... vi List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... vii Introduction Counter-Cartographies: Confabulation, Indeterminacy and Wayfinding .................. 1 Section I Routes, Runes, and Renovations: Literary Interventions in Vancouver ........................ 19 Chapter 1 “A Map of the City”: Wayfinding Vancouver ........................................................ 32 Chapter 2 “Rune” and “Routes”: Confabulating Vancouver ................................................... 47 Chapter 3 Rebuild: Renovating Vancouver.............................................................................. 71 Section II Lost Roads, Invisible Cities, and Malay Sketches — Literary Detours in Contemporary Singapore ......................................................................................................... 87 Chapter 4 Lost Roads, Singapore: Going off the map with Tan Shzr Ee .............................. 105 Chapter 5 “A teeming, contested terrain”: Tan Pin Pin’s Singapore Gaga and Invisible City .................................................................................................................................. 126 Chapter 6 Malay Sketches, Singapore: Alfian Sa’at’s Minor Literature ................................ 159 Section III Cities, Histories, and Futures: Transnational Wayfinding ........................................ 180 Chapter 7 Transnational Toronto in Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For ....................... 189 Chapter 8 Spatialized Desire and Queer Phenomenologies in Lydia Kwa’s This Place Called Absence ................................................................................................................ 209 Chapter 9 “The Unregulated Zone”: Borders, Crossings and Speculative Wayfinding in Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl ............................................................................................. 225 Coda: Towards Speculative Counter-Cartographies ................................................................... 245 Works Cited and Consulted ........................................................................................................ 251 Copyright Acknowledgements