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Divercity – Global Cities As a Literary Phenomenon Melanie U. Pooch DiverCity – Global Cities as a Literary Phenomenon Lettre Melanie U. Pooch received her doctoral degree at the University of Mannheim, Germany. Her research interests include Corporate Responsibility and North American cultural, urban, and literary studies in a globalizing age. Melanie U. Pooch DiverCity – Global Cities as a Literary Phenomenon Toronto, New York, and Los Angeles in a Globalizing Age The original version of this manuscript was submitted as a doctoral dissertation to the University of Mannheim. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Natio- nalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de © 2016 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or uti- lized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any infor- mation storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover layout: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Cover illustration: New York City 2007 by Michela Zangiacomi Busch, Sulz- burg; © M.U. Pooch Printed in Germany Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-3541-6 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-3541-0 Contents Acknowledgements | 7 1 Introduction | 9 2 Globalization and Its Effects | 15 2.1 Mapping Globalization | 15 2.2 Global Consensus | 18 2.3 Global Controversies | 23 3 Global Cities as Cultural Nodal Points | 27 3.1 Urban Studies | 28 3.2 Cultural Nodal Points | 31 3.3 Toronto, New York, and Los Angeles | 33 4 Cultural Diversity in a Globalizing Age | 37 4.1 Concepts of Identity | 40 4.2 Postcolonial Discourse | 42 4.3 Intra, Inter, Multi, and Trans | 49 4.4 The Melting Pot, Salad Bowl, and Canadian Mosaic | 53 5 The Poetics of diverCity | 57 5.1 The Poetics of Narrative | 63 5.2 The Poetics of Place | 67 5.3 The Poetics of Code-Switching | 73 6 Dionne Brand’s Toronto, What We All Long For | 79 6.1 The Global City of Toronto | 79 6.2 Toronto Imagined: The World in a City | 86 6.2.1 Polyphonic Murmuring | 88 6.2.2 Converging Threads | 94 6.2.3 Mapping the World in a City | 98 6.2.4 Counter-Cartographies | 103 6.2.5 Time-Space Discrepancy | 109 6.2.6 Longing and Belonging | 113 6.3 Interim Conclusion | 120 7 Chang-rae Lee’s New York, Native Speaker | 123 7.1 The Global City of New York | 123 7.2 New York Imagined: A City of Wor(l)ds | 132 7.2.1 The Strangest Chorale | 135 7.2.2 False Speaker of Language | 138 7.2.3 Amiable Man | 142 7.2.4 The Immigrant City | 149 7.2.5 Interethnic Imagination | 156 7.3 Interim Conclusion | 162 8 Karen Tei Yamashita’s Los Angeles, Tropic of Orange | 165 8.1 The Global City of Los Angeles | 165 8.2 Los Angeles Imagined: The World City | 175 8.2.1 HyperContexts | 177 8.2.2 The Polyglot | 184 8.2.3 The Global | 187 8.2.4 ElastiCity | 192 8.2.5 These Lines | 198 8.3 Interim Conclusion | 203 9 Conclusion | 205 Works Cited | 211 Acknowledgements First and foremost, I want to thank my advisors and mentors Prof. Dr. Ulfried Reichardt and Prof. Dr. Christa Grewe-Volpp. It has been an honor to be your Ph.D. student. Thank you, Prof. Dr. Roger Keil, Prof. Dr. Jens Martin Gurr, Prof. Dr. Wil- fried Raussert, and Prof. Karen Tei Yamashita for your generous support and in- spiration with your knowledge and expertise. Thank you my friends for many in- sightful comments regarding my interdisciplinary project. I highly appreciate the Ph.D. scholarships I received by the Graduate Pro- gram “Formations of the Global” at the University of Mannheim and the Gradu- ate Scholarship Program of the state of Baden-Württemberg. The German Aca- demic Exchange Service (DAAD), the FAZIT Foundation, and the University of Mannheim supported my research abroad in the U.S. and Canada as well as my presentations at conferences in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, and Germany. Finally, I would like to thank my family, in particular my mom and my sis- ter. My special thanks goes to my partner and his family. I cannot thank you and my family enough for encouraging me throughout this experience. 1 Introduction The two decades after the beginning of the 1990s saw a paradigm shift across various academic fields, one that also sustainably changed literary and cultural studies. During this time, as a result of the interdisciplinary research of the soci- oeconomic phenomenon of globalization, North American literary and cultural studies were increasingly denationalizing, reflecting the world-wide globaliza- tion process with its increased connectivity and convergence, the erosion of bor- ders, and a growing multidirectional migration. At the same time, interethnic writing was gaining significance, particularly in Canadian multicultural literature and Asian American literature, and established schools of urbanism were per- forming in-depth studies of global cities as global cultural nodal points in a glob- al network of flows and as major points of intersection for different ethnicities. This co-existence of the rising significance of interethnic writing and the greater understanding of global urbanism has meant that the urban literature of the time illustrates and reflects the multiplicity of cultural diversity in a globalizing age. As this work’s title ‘DiverCity – Global Cities as a Literary Phenomenon’ expresses, the literary representation of cultural diversity in a globalizing age is analyzed by focusing on the North American global cities of Toronto, New York, and Los Angeles. The neologism ‘diverCity,’ a compound blend of ‘diver- sity’ and ‘city,’ stresses this study’s emphasis of the impact of cultural diversity in a globalizing age on global cities as a literary phenomenon. Thus, globaliza- tion functions as the temporal frame, global cities as the spatial frame, and cul- tural diversity as the topical frame. The common aesthetics of global literature, urban fiction, and ethnic writing identified in this literary analysis are ‘the poet- ics of narrative,’ ‘the poetics of place,’ and ‘the poetics of code-switching.’ Thus, the three selected contemporary North American novels serve as examples of how an analysis by a ‘poetics of diverCity’ provides the opportunity to ana- lyze ethnic urban literature in a globalizing age in a structured way. 10 | DIVERCITY – GLOBAL CITIES AS A LITERARY PHENOMENON This analysis aims to identify and distinguish specifics and synchronies of global cities as a literary phenomenon. Whereas the term ‘specifiCity’ explains the specific particularities of each global city as a result of its individual eco- nomic, geo-political, and socio-cultural present and past, the concept of ‘syn- chroniCity’ describes parallel phenomena in a global context, in particular for globalization and its worldwide effects. Using a structured literary analysis in- volving a poetics of narrative, place, and code-switching allows common as well as individual aspects of global cities as a literary phenomenon to crystallize. As a prerequisite, however, the key terms and particular aesthetics of this analysis need to be introduced. This work begins in chapter 2 with a brief definition of globalization and its effects. The term ‘globalization’ has been used in literature since the 1980s, soon being applied all-pervasively across different disciplines. Although globalization is claimed to have started as early as around the discovery of the Americas and was accelerated by the nineteenth century’s globe-encompassing transportation and communication, the term gained stronger momentum with the growing glob- al economy in the 1990s. In this globalizing age, increased connectivity, im- proved technologies, and perceived convergence lead to growing global interde- pendence, the slow erosion of geo-political borders, and multi-directional migra- tions. These forces and innovations have triggered global economic, cultural, and media exchange. In this work, homogenization and hybridization, which de- scribe a form of standardization and heterogeneity, are presented as the main de- parture points within the discussion of globalization. Chapter 3 places the emphasis on global cities as cultural nodal points, while exploring the interactional relationship of globalization, cultural diversity, and urban space. After introducing the two rivaling movements of urban studies, the traditional Chicago school and the more recent L.A. school, and the main charac- teristics, functions, and qualities of global cities, attention is shifted to the cultur- al significance of urban centers in a global network of flows. In this study, the global cities of interest are Toronto, New York, and Los Angeles, three of the largest, most culturally diverse, and globally connected metropolis in North America. While Los Angeles and New York are the American global cities, the preeminent Canadian global city of Toronto is included to show how different regional and national discourses impact cultural diversity in global cities in a globalizing age. In chapter 4, the concept of ‘cultural diversity’ and the wide array of neigh- boring terms are explored. Due to the acceleration of cultural flows and the po- rosity of borders, cultural exchange in a globalizing age is increasingly under- stood and practiced multidirectionally. As a consequence, constructions such as INTRODUCTION | 11 ‘national identity’ are progressively questioned because cultural identity is being understood more flexibly and dynamically. Emerging in American discourse in the late 1970s, the term ‘diversity’ describes the process of individual and group identity formation, involving a range of different cultures. In literary and cultural studies, ‘diversity’ is connected to a multitude of neighboring concepts, such as ‘postcolonial hybridity,’ ‘transnationalism,’ or ‘the melting pot,’ each indicating topics of integration, immigration, adaption, cultural dominance, or assimilation. To analyze the type or degree of integration of specific ethnicities, minorities, or immigrants in a particular global city, the different forms and conceptualizations of diversity need to be examined.
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