Making Sense of Smell in Canadian Diasporic Women's Writing

Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 1-31-2014 Diffuse Connections: Making Sense of Smell in Canadian Diasporic Women's Writing Stephanie Oliver The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Pauline Wakeham The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in English A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Stephanie Oliver 2014 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Oliver, Stephanie, "Diffuse Connections: Making Sense of Smell in Canadian Diasporic Women's Writing" (2014). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 1892. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/1892 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. DIFFUSE CONNECTIONS: MAKING SENSE OF SMELL IN CANADIAN DIASPORIC WOMEN’S WRITING (Thesis format: Monograph) by Stephanie Oliver Graduate Program in English A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada © Stephanie Oliver 2014 ! i Abstract This dissertation explores the crucial, yet often unacknowledged, role smell plays in Canadian diasporic women’s writing. While some critics discuss scent in their work on taste, memory, and diasporic nostalgia, I argue for considering scent in its specificity and suggest that smell shapes diasporic subjectivities differently than taste. Complicating frameworks that focus primarily on notions of memory, homeland, and nostalgia, I consider how diasporic subjectivities are shaped by a range of feelings connected to experiences in past homelands and present places of habitation, including racialized and gendered forms of olfactory discrimination in the ostensibly tolerant nation of Canada. Appropriating the concept of diffusion from scientific theories of smell, I re- conceptualize diffusion as a model of movement and mixing that complicates narratives of linear diasporic migrations from a single point of origin. I use diffusion to theorize “diffuse connections,” a framework that emphasizes the blending of diasporic experiences across time and space and the intimate intersubjective encounters that emerge through scent. Each chapter explores novels by Canadian diasporic women writers that represent diasporic subjectivities in terms of diffuse connections. Chapter One analyzes how Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night represents smell as an alternative way of articulating the unspeakable violence that may mark domestic spaces in the Indo-Caribbean diaspora. I examine how diasporic women mobilize smell as a productive tool for queering heteropatriarchal approaches to “home.” Chapter Two complicates the relationship between diaspora, settler colonialism, and indigenization by turning to Hiromi Goto’s Chorus of Mushrooms and The Kappa Child. Situating Goto’s work within the historical ! ii context of Japanese settlement in Canada and using Joy Kogawa’s Obasan as an intertext, I explore how agricultural odours betray the traces of indigenizing practices associated with diasporic settlement and reveal how a range of diasporic communities may be complicit in ongoing structures of colonization. Chapter Three examines the intersections of smell, contamination, and pandemic in Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl. I consider how Lai defamiliarizes past and present forms of pathologizing “Asian” subjects through scent and offers posthuman kinship as an alternative model of diasporic community that challenges racist epistemologies of smell. Keywords: Smell, diaspora, subjectivity, race, gender, sexuality, queerness, Canada, multiculturalism, women’s writing, Shani Mootoo, Hiromi Goto, Larissa Lai. ! iii Acknowledgements Words cannot begin to express how thankful I am for everyone who has helped this dissertation come to fruition. Thank you to my supervisor, Dr. Pauline Wakeham, for taking a chance on me. Thank you for the tireless effort you put into my many drafts and for providing generous comments at every turn. I can only hope that one day I will have your keen critical eye. The many, many hours you devoted to giving me invaluable feedback – whether in person or in writing, via email or via phone – are a testament to your commitment to your students. Thank you for pushing the boundaries of my thought, thank you for your unwavering support, and thank you for seeing me through. I would like to thank Dr. Lily Cho for providing the inspiration for this project and for offering insightful comments along the way. I would also like to thank Dr. Manina Jones for joining my committee and providing constructive criticism on a number of drafts (and for all the “smelly” emails!). I am grateful to have had the opportunity to work with such a creative, generous, and supportive supervisory committee. Thank you to my examiners, Dr. Sneja Gunew, Dr. Kim Verwaayen, Dr. Tunji Osinubi, and Dr. Thy Phu, for reading my dissertation and providing thoughtful and energizing feedback on my work. I am grateful to have had such distinguished scholars examine my dissertation, and your comments will be an invaluable resource going forward. I also want to thank the many professors who inspired me along the way, especially Dr. Sherryl Vint, Dr. Richard Nemesvari, and Dr. Jonathan Boulter. My academic journey began at StFX, and it was in your classrooms that I discovered the ! iv value of literary analysis and critical thinking. I would not be here if I had not had such amazing teachers in the early stages of my university career. Thank you to my friends here in London and across the country. I am lucky to have kept in touch with so many amazing people from Stephenville and StFX (particularly Meaghan Campbell, Megan Cooper, Courtney MacSween, Erin Marche, Elizabeth McMillan, Jeanna Parsons, Amanda Pashkoski, and Julie Stewart) and to have made so many new friends here in London (especially Tom Barnes, Ross Bullen, Joel Burton, Rebecca Campbell, Patrick Casey, Mike Choi, Andre Cormier, David Drysdale, David Hickey, Jenna Hunnef, Raj Kapila, Joshua Lambier, Erica Leighton, Amelia Lubowitz, Rebecca Mudge, Tina Northrup, Elan Paulson, Sarah Pesce, and Alicia Robinet). I am grateful for every phone call, email, and text message, for every party invite and drop-in visit, for every pint and conversation shared. Whether near or far, you kept me going. Thank you. My acknowledgments would not be complete without thanking my family. Thank you to Mom, Dad, Jessica, Adrienne, and Mark Mills for supporting me from afar. I looked forward to every trip “back home” to Newfoundland and every visit to Nova Scotia, and you made each one – however brief – feel like a true “break.” Thank you for your love and support, for keeping me grounded, and for being my first educational role models. I also want to thank my extended family – my first “intellectual community” – for always being there for me and for demonstrating the value of engaged and engaging conversation. I particularly want to thank my uncle, Peter Robertson, for his generosity. Pete, you helped me expand my possibilities post-PhD and I will be forever grateful. I also want to extend my thanks to the Glennies (Judy, Ray, Joe, Andrew, and Stephanie ! v Scott), for believing in me and providing a “home away from home” whenever I visited or they were in town. But most of all, I want to say thank you to Phil. Thank you for your love, support, and generosity during the many, many days I spent working on this dissertation and other PhD-related work. You are my rock, and you inspire me on a daily basis to be a better scholar and person. There is no other way to put it: this would not have happened without you. Thank you. ! vi Table of Contents Abstract ………………………………………………………………………..……….…ii Acknowledgments ……………………………………………………………..…………iii Table of Contents …….………………………………………………..………………...vii Introduction: The Olfactory Turn in Canadian Diasporic Women’s Writing …………….1 Chapter One: Home Sweet Home?: Smell, Queerness, and Diasporic Domesticity in Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night………………………………………...….77 Chapter Two: The Scents of Diasporic Settlement: Cultivation and Indigenization in Hiromi Goto’s Chorus of Mushrooms and The Kappa Child …………………..…155 Chapter Three: Pungent Pathologies: Smell, Disease, and Diasporic Subjectivity in Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl …………….………………………………………….237 Conclusion …….………………………………………………..………………………304 Works Cited …….……………………………………..………..………………………315 Curriculum Vitae ……………………………..………..……………………………….346 ! vii ! 1 Introduction: The Olfactory Turn in Canadian Diasporic Women’s Writing Whether it is the stench of salt fish, the musky odour of mushrooms, or the heady scent of cereus flowers, representations of smell permeate the work of Canadian diasporic writers.1 In Michael Ondaatje’s novel In the Skin of a Lion (1987), the reeking smell of chemicals marks immigrant tannery workers in Toronto as a sign of their labour.2 In Dionne Brand’s poem “No Language is Neutral” (1990), the “smell of sea water and fresh fish” in Guaya (19) contrasts starkly with the “smell of an office full of hatred” in Toronto (29), demarcating the differences between the Caribbean and Canada. In Anita Rau Badami’s

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