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Body Histories and the Limits of Life in Asian Canadian Literature

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Body Histories and the Limits of Life in Asian Canadian Literature Body Histories and the Limits of Life in Asian Canadian Literature by Ranbir Kaur Banwait M.A., Simon Fraser University, 2008 Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Ranbir Kaur Banwait 2014 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Summer 2014 Approval Name: Ranbir Kaur Banwait Degree: Doctor of Philosophy (English) Title of Thesis: Body Histories and the Limits of Life in Asian Canadian Literature Examining Committee: Chair: Dr. Sean Zwagerman Associate Professor of English Dr. Christine Kim Co-Senior Supervisor Assistant Professor of English Dr. David Chariandy Co-Senior Supervisor Associate Professor of English Dr. Larissa Lai Associate Professor of English University of Calgary Dr. Lara Campbell Internal Examiner Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Dr. Donald Goellnicht External Examiner Professor of English and Cultural Studies McMaster University Date Defended/Approved: July 24, 2014 ii Partial Copyright Licence iii Abstract Histories of racialization in Canada are closely tied to the development of eugenics and racial hygiene movements, but also to broader concerns, expressed throughout Western modernity, regarding the “health” of nation states and their subjects. This dissertation analyses books by Velma Demerson, Hiromi Goto, David Chariandy, Rita Wong, Roy Miki and Larissa Lai to argue that Asian Canadian literature reveals, in heightened critical terms, how the politics of racial difference has consistently been articulated through the language of bodily health, life, and feeling. Building upon existing debates in Asian Canadian literary studies, and drawing from interdisciplinary scholarship in biopolitics and affect theory, the dissertation reveals how the discourse of “life” and “health” has served as the rationale for practices such as internment, sterilization, and unauthorized medical experiments, but also how the literature and theory of the feeling body, including its memories, symptoms, and conceptual limits, can promote awareness both of historical injustice and of the new terms informing the cultural politics of race today. Keywords: Asian Canadian literature; Affect theory; Biopolitics; Eugenics and medicalization; Racialization iv Dedication For Be ji and Papa ji, and Mum and Daj, with love and affection v Acknowledgements I gratefully acknowledge the support of my supervisory committee, who have always mentored in the spirit of intellectual generosity. Many thanks to my co-supervisors Dr. Christine Kim and Dr. David Chariandy. I thank Dr. Kim for her brilliant intellect and for insisting on intellectual rigour, for providing incisive feedback, for the many discussions we’ve had about Asian Canadian studies over the years, and for always returning me to Asian Canadian literature. I am greatly indebted to Dr. Chariandy for his infinite patience as I slowly developed my ideas, for his hospitality over the years, for always sharing the astounding breadth of his knowledge, for always giving insightful responses to my work, for his incredibly generous support, guidance and careful edits during the final stages of the dissertation, and for inspiring me by showing me how to write differently. I would also like to thank Dr. Larissa Lai for providing thought-provoking feedback, for challenging me to try harder, for crucial lessons in writing and for sharing her inspirational ideas. This dissertation was made possible by the generous support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Simon Fraser University. I am also thankful to the SFU community and the English Department in particular, for providing an intellectually stimulating and supportive environment for academic work. Graduate Chair Jeff Derksen, graduate secretary Christa Gruninger and department manager Maureen Curtin have all provided invaluable support, and librarians Rebecca Dowson and Yolanda Koscielski offered important guidance during the research process. Thesis assistants Joanie Wolfe and Amber Saunders provided indispensable help along the way. I would also like to thank April Leprette for so many encouraging words as I worked toward completion. Farah Moosa for many insightful conversations and support, and Kim Mulder, Graham Lyons, Christine McInnis Lyons, Jennifer Anne Scott, vi Alison Dean, Marc Acherman, and Haida Arsenault-Antolick, for friendship and words of advice. A special thank you to Mohan Heer and Preet Gill. I am indebted to Dr. Lara Campbell for teaching a class in the first year of my PhD that came to deeply influence my thinking on the intersections of gender and medicalization. I am grateful to Dr. Roy Miki for inspiring me to pursue the study of Asian Canadian literature in the first place. A special thank you to my family: my grandparents, Dharam Kaur Chera and Bhagat Singh Chera for so many words of love, guidance and wisdom during the formative years of my life, my great-mamaji, Ajit Singh Rye for invaluable advice early in my life, my masiji, Kailash Kaur Saini for so much love and so many blessings, my mama ji, Inderjit Singh Chera, for listening, and Roop S Saini, Kanweljot K Saini, Gurkirat K Saini, Gursanjit S Chera and Gurpawan K Chera for so much laughter, fun and encouragement over the years, and Baljit Singh Pabla for always asking me challenging questions. Thank you to my brothers Manbir S Banwait and Karambir S Banwait, and Tina T Banwait for generous and loving support along the way. And Sajan S Banwait and Samiya K Banwait for the joy they brought into my life. And especially my parents, Kulvinderjit Kaur Banwait and Jasbir Singh Banwait, for dreaming beside me, and for so much more than words can express. vii Table of Contents Approval ............................................................................................................................... ii Partial Copyright Licence .................................................................................................... iii Abstract ............................................................................................................................... iv Dedication ............................................................................................................................ v Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................. vi Table of Contents .............................................................................................................. viii List of Figures ....................................................................................................................... x List of Poems ........................................................................................................................ x Introduction: When Affective Bodies Meet Biopower: A Reflection on Feelings and the Life of the Human in Asian Canadian Literature ..................... 1 Asian Canadian Subjects and Objects of Knowledge .......................................................... 7 Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl and Remembering Through the Body ...................................... 27 Chapter 1. The Speakability of Emotions and the Impossibility of Speech in Velma Demerson’s Incorrigible ..................................................... 38 1.1. The Interconnecting Histories of Asian Canadian Men and White, Working- Class Women ........................................................................................................... 46 1.2. Incorrigibility: Legal Effects and Affective Governmentality ................................... 57 1.3. Racial Melancholia and Racialization by Proxy ........................................................ 82 1.4. Experimental Bodies and the Contradictions of Racial Citizenship ......................... 97 1.5. Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 123 Chapter 2. Body Histories and Feeling Memories in Hiromi Goto’s Hopeful Monsters and David Chariandy’s Soucouyant ................................. 124 2.1. Forms of Address and Narrative Incompletion ..................................................... 130 2.2. Hope, Motherhood and the Promise of Happiness in “Hopeful Monsters” ......... 136 2.3. From Mourning to Terror: the Faceless Neighbour in “From Across a River” ...... 150 2.4. Body Memories and Mediated Feelings in Soucouyant ........................................ 163 2.5. Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 185 Chapter 3. Inhuman Subjects and Nonhuman Feelings in Rita Wong’s forage and Roy Miki’s Mannequin Rising ....................................... 186 3.1. Asian Canadian Experimental Poetry and Affective Form ..................................... 191 3.2. An Affective Anti-Economy in Rita Wong’s forage ................................................ 200 viii 3.3. Political Feelings and Posthuman Subjects in Roy Miki’s Mannequin Rising ........ 213 3.4. Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 241 Conclusion: Psychic Property and Clockwork Feelings ............................................ 243 Coming Full Circle in Larissa Lai’s Automaton Biographies ............................................ 249 Works Cited .....................................................................................................
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