In Transit. Aspects of Transculturalism in Janice Kulyk Keefer's Travels
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UNIVERSITY OF UMEÅ DISSERTATION ISSN 0345-0155 ISBN 91-7191-211-8 From the Department of English, Faculty of Humanities, Umeå University, Sweden In Transit Aspects of Transculturalism in Janice Kulyk Keefer’s Travels AN ACADEMIC DISSERTATION which will, on the proper authority of the Chancellor’s Office of Umeå University for passing the doctoral examination, be publicly defended in hörsal F, Humanisthuset, on Saturday, 14th September, 1996, at 10.15 a.m. Elisabeth Mårald Umeå University Umeå 1996 Abstract Transculturalism refers to how cultural barriers are transcended and how cultures meet. Because the transcultural perspective reflects hitherto unrepresented spaces, it revises and innovates literary canons. This study investigates aspects of transculturalism in texts dealing with travel by the Canadian writer Janice Kulyk Keefer. It also explores how these aspects might alter our view of Canadian literature. The transcultural perspectives between mainstream Canada and Ukraine, Europe and Acadie have been analysed through three tropes of travel: departure, passage and arrival. Keefer’s texts have been read in accordance with Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogic theories to chart transcultural encounters and clashes. This thesis argues that a historic consciousness of their ethnic group gives the young generation a transcultural position that enables them to profit from their dual cultural competence. Although Imagined Communities are affirmed as receptacles of the cultural heritage, the impending environmental catastrophe demands that the national interests that they represent be abandoned for international co-operation. In Keefer’s European texts the transcultural aspects reflect how travel becomes synonymous with quests and epiphanies. Travelling is described as a learning process inRest Harrow where the protagonist’s increasing cultural competence changes her from a tourist to a real traveller. The transcultural aspects also unmask prejudices, collisions and failed transitions. In this context Imagined Communities are criticized as agents of the colonial discourse, chauvinism, and intolerance. The transcultural perspective also reveals that patriarchal paradigms and the silencing of persecutions victimize the young generation. Furthermore, their ignorance of the mother tongue works as a linguistic barrier shutting them out from their ethnic group. Keefer's Acadian texts support Bakhtin's contention that isolated groups become intolerant to strangers and deviants. While the transcultural perspective unmasks tourists' perception of other countries as idiosyncratic, also the travellers' own ironic postmodernist view of themselves as tourists and of the artificiality of tourism is featured. The cultural assumptions of literary discourse are challenged by border blurring phenomena such as story-telling, the camivalesque, intertextuality and historiographic metafiction. Thus the morality of Keefer's transcultural approach lies also in her literary technique. The alternative perspective inherent in transculturalism makes individuals break away from their given cultural context to embrace a new transcultural ethos. Keywords: transculturalism, ethnicity, the postcolonial discourse, travels, tourism, imagology, Imagined Communities, environment, Bakhtin's dialogic theories, cultural studies. In Transit: Aspects of Transculturalism in Janice Kulyk Keefer’s Travels © Elisabeth Mårald Editor Per Råberg Faculty of Arts University of Umeå S-901 87 Umeå Distributed by Swedish Science Press Box 118 S-751 04 Uppsala, Sweden Printed in Sweden by Umeå University Printing Office, 1996 ISSN 0345-0155 ISBN 91-7191-211-8 ACTA UNIVERSITATIS UMENSIS Umeå Studies in the H umanities 130 In Transit Aspects of Transculturalism in Janice Kulyk Keefer’s Travels Elisabeth Mårald Umeå University 1996 Elisabeth Mårald. In Transit: Aspects of Transculturalism in Janice Kulyk Keefer's Travels. Department of English, Umeå University, S-901 87 Umeå, Sweden. Monograph 1996, 182 pp. Acta Universitatis Umensis. Umeå Studies in the Humanities 130. ISSN 0345-0155 ISBN 91-7191-211-8 Distributed by Swedish Science Press, Box 118, S-751 04 Uppsala, Sweden. Abstract Transculturalism refers to how cultural barriers are transcended and how cultures meet. Because the transcultural perspective reflects hitherto unrepresented spaces, it revises and innovates literary canons. This study investigates aspects of transculturalism in texts dealing with travel by the Canadian writer Janice Kulyk Keefer. It also explores how these aspects might alter our view of Canadian literature. The transcultural perspectives between mainstream Canada and Ukraine, Europe and Acadie have been analysed through three tropes of travel: departure, passage and arrival. Keefer's texts have been read in accordance with Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogic theories to chart transcultural encounters and clashes. This thesis argues that a historic conscious ness of their ethnic group gives the young generation a transcultural position that enables them to profit from their dual cultural competence. Although Imagined Communities are affirmed as receptacles of the cultural heritage, the impending environmental catastrophe demands that the national interests that they represent be abandoned for international co operation. In Keefer's European texts the transcultural aspects reflect how travel becomes synonymous with quests and epiphanies. Travelling is described as a learning process in Rest Harrow where the protagonist's increasing cultural competence changes her from a tourist to a real traveller. The transcultural aspects also unmask prejudices, collisions and failed transitions. In this context Imagined Communities are criticized as agents of the colonial discourse, chauvinism, and intolerance. The transcultural perspective also reveals that patriarchal paradigms and the silencing of persecutions victimize the young generation. Furthermore, their ignorance of the mother tongue works as a linguistic barrier shutting them out from their ethnic group. Keefer's Acadian texts support Bakhtin's contention that isolated groups become intolerant to strangers and deviants. While the transcultural perspective unmasks tourists' perception of other countries as idiosyncratic, also the travellers' own ironic postmodernist view of themselves as tourists and of the artificiality of tourism is featured. The cultural assumptions of literary discourse are challenged by border blurring phe nomena such as story-telling, the camivalesque, intertextuality and historiographic metafiction. Thus the morality of Keefer's transcultural approach lies also in her literary technique. The alternative perspective inherent in transculturalism makes individuals break away from their given cultural context to embrace a new transcultural ethos. Keywords: transculturalism, ethnicity, the postcolonial discourse, travels, tourism, imagology, Imagined Communities, environment, Bakhtin's dialogic theories, cultural studies. to Bert and to my father Contents Acknowledgements iii Introduction 1 Transcultural Aspects 3 Janice Kulyk Keefer, Her Text and Their Place in Canadian Literature 7 Travel as Frame 12 Definitions of Multiculturalism, Culture, Identity, Ethnicity 14 Aims and Methods 18 Part I. Departure: The Immigrant Journey Departure 23 1. Life-Writing 26 "Another Country": The Reconstruction of Family History 27 "The Country of the Dead": A Child’s Reception of Ukrainian Stories 33 "Nach Unten": The Linguistic Barrier and Ukrainian Holocaust Victims 36 "Kiev, November 1993": The Imagined Community of Ukraine and Real Kiev 40 Conclusion 43 2. Third-Person Narratives with Fictitious Characters 45 "Prodigals": Aspects of a Ukrainian-Canadian Childhood 45 "Unseen, the Cuckoo Sings at Dawn": The Dialogization of the Imagined Community of Ukraine in Canada 49 "Red River Cruise": The Divided Loyalties of Ukrainian-Canadian Teenagers 56 "Bella Rabinovich/Arabella Rose": A Child’s Reaction to the Suppression of the Holocaust Experience 61 Conclusion 68 Part IL The Passage: The European Journey The Passage 71 1. Canadian Attitudes to Europe in Four Short Stories 74 "The Paris-Napoli Express": The Jewish Reaction to Europe 75 "The Grandes Platières": The Never-Ending Passage of the Expatriate 82 "The Grey Valise": An Anglo-Canadian Approach to Italy 88 "The Gardens of the Loire": A Francophone-Canadian in France 95 Conclusion 100 2. Rest Harrow 103 A. The Imagined Community of Britain and the Impending Environmental Catastrophe 103 British Nationalism and the Nineteenth-Century Novel 104 The Island Myth 105 Pastoral England 108 The Two Nations 112 Staged History and Tourism 114 B. Rest Harrow as a Female Künstlerroman 116 Conclusion 122 Part III. Arrival: The Prodigals’ Homecoming Arrival 125 1. Claire 127 Reconstruction of Acadian History 132 The Acadian Community 134 Reconstruction of Claire’s Childhood 137 Claire's Rite of Passage 140 Intertexts 141 2. Hector 146 The Acadian Community 147 Intertexts 151 3. Louise/Louisette 153 The Acadian Community 155 Intertexts 160 Conclusion 160 Summary and Conclusion 163 Works Cited 169 Index 181 Acknowledgements The epitaph of Keefer's Travelling Ladies : "The real traveller is the one who never arrives," seems to apply to me. Not only did I as a travelling lady for many years go 270 kilometres southward to Umeå university to attend seminars, but I was also so enmeshed in Keefer's stories that there did not seem to be an end to what I could learn from them. When now at last my dissertation has come to a conclusion