Publics in the Making: A Genealogical Inquiry into the Discursive Publics of Japanese Canadian Redress by Jennifer Matsunaga A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Sociology Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario © 2011, Jennifer Matsunaga Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington OttawaONK1A0N4 OttawaONK1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre re'terence ISBN: 978-0-494-83084-0 Our file Notre rSterence ISBN: 978-0-494-83084-0 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. 1+1 Canada Abstract Secondary literature on Japanese Canadian redress includes trace references to public support; however, the literature fails to scrutinize the composition or involvement of the public to any meaningful degree. In this thesis I use a genealogical approach (Foucault 1977; 1991) to theorize the constitution and involvement of publics injustice-making. In order to tie an analysis of publics together with an analysis of discourse, I employ the concepts of discursive publics and counterpublics (Warner 2002). Through the analysis of lists present in redress materials of the 1940s and the 1980s, I argue that redress discourse shifted between these points from a predominantly rationalist discourse to a subjectivist one. Through these differences we can equally perceive a shift in redress authority from publics to counterpublics. I demonstrate that the shifts in redress discourse and discursive publics in these two moments correspond to different understandings of and interaction with the dominant discourse of assimilation. n Acknowledgements I am grateful to many people and regret that I cannot fit everyone on this page! First, my sincere thanks to Dr. William Walters. I became a stronger and more confident student from the teaching and guidance I received from you throughout this project and in class. Your knowledge, experience, insight (and humour!) have been invaluable to me over the years. Next, I am grateful to Dr. Jennifer Henderson for challenging me to dig deeper and to explore this topic from angles I had not considered. Your knowledge and guidance enabled me to better my work immensely. I hope to embody those qualities I value in you both as academics, professors and individuals, in my own career one day. To my daughter, Lily Chen, thank you for being my beautiful source of fuel and for graciously putting up with the many late nights and weekends I spent working on this. To my mother, Diane Matsunaga, thank you for your strength and for being the key enabler and cheerleader of my dreams. To my father, Ray Matsunaga, thank you for opening my eyes to the richness of our family heritage and the obligation we have to treat people with respect. It is out of my love and respect for you that I chose this project. To my brother, Jason Cooley, thank you for inspiring me to have a political spirit and a passion for writing. Without these, I would never have completed this degree. To my brother, Todd Matsunaga, thank you for always keeping me musically and creatively intact; this is the stuff my happiness is made of. Finally, in loving memory of my grandmother, Tami Matsunaga, I dedicate this work. I give thanks for how she taught me the importance of family and for her box of mismatched buttons - Letting me play with these buttons as a child now symbolizes the first stirrings of the appreciation I have for what can be enjoyed about differences. iii Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Table of Contents iv List of Tables vi List of Appendices vii Introduction 1 Chapter 1: A Review of Literature on Japanese Canadian Redress 5 1.1 What is Redress? 5 1.2 "What Counts as Reparation?": Redress as Justice-form vs Redress as Justice-making . 7 1.3 "Who is Involved in the Act of Setting Right?": An Examination of Japanese Canadian Redress 1943-1988 18 Chapter 2: A Theoretical Framework for Examining History and the Public 25 2.1 History and the Public 25 2.2 Traditional vs. Effective History 26 2.3 A Genealogy of Redress Discourse 31 2.4 Warner's Publics and Counterpublics 36 Chapter 3: Making Redress Publics of Rationalist Discourse 44 3.1 Preliminary Analysis: Two Moments of Listing the Grounds for Appeal 46 3.2 MEMORANDUM TO OFFICIAL DISCOURSE: Secondary Redress Publics Rationalizing Redress 51 3.3 Analysis: "To the Prime Minister of Canada, And Whom it May Concern:" 58 3.4 Analysis: "What About the Japanese Canadians?" 64 3.5 Conclusions of this Analysis 69 iv Chapter 4: Making Redress Publics of Subjectivist Discourse 74 4.1 SCRAPBOOK OF REDRESS DISCOURSE: Primary Redress Publics Subjectivizing Redress 77 4.2 Analysis: "Dear Mr. Mulroney" 85 4.3 Analysis: Justice In Our Time: Redress For Japanese Canadians 95 4.4 Conclusions of this Analysis 98 Conclusion 102 Appendices 106 Appendix A 106 Appendix B 108 Appendix C 109 Appendix D 110 Appendix E Ill Appendix F 112 Appendix G 114 Appendix H 116 Appendix 1 118 Appendix J 119 Appendix K 120 Appendix L 121 Appendix M 123 Appendix N 125 References 126 v List of Tables Table 1 Key Comparisons between Traditional and Effective Histories 30 VI List of Appendices Appendix A 106 Appendix B 108 Appendix C 109 Appendix D 110 Appendix E Ill Appendix F 112 Appendix G 114 Appendix H 116 Appendix 1 118 Appendix J 119 Appendix K 120 Appendix L 121 Appendix M 123 Appendix N 125 VII Introduction As an eleven year old, I understood the word "redress" only as being related to the fact that my family was able to buy a new furnace for the house earlier than expected. I can remember hearing Knowlton Nash on the CBC News reporting on the redress campaign and my dad on the telephone with my uncle Bob asking about the forms he had to fill out. I also remember the uneasiness dad expressed over the application since he was "only a kid" when "it" happened. Though I had very little understanding of what "it" was at the time, I would later learn "it" was the internment of roughly 22,000 Japanese Canadians, the "repatriation" of some 4000 of them, the confiscation and selling of their property by government, and a dispersal policy which resulted in a loss of identity, language and a sense of community (JAC 2005). Later, I came to understand the word "redress" to mem justice for Japanese Canadians that involved Brian Mulroney and the National Association of Japanese Canadians (NAJC). Today, I understand "redress" to mean, not only that 1988 settlement that made our home a bit warmer, but a complex network of publics, formed by discourse and engaged injustice-making effort that required great socio-political struggle, new understandings of identity, and the development of new discourses through which to understand injustice and its possible resolutions. I arrived at this understanding of redress through the development of this thesis which presents a genealogy of redress discourse and a theorization of the publics and counterpublics involved in its creation and circulation. Most broadly, I question the references made to "the public" in redress discourse. Some of the literature on Japanese Canadian redress, covered in Chapter 1, cites the public as integral to the success of the 1 1988 settlement and assigns it agency and power. The public however, has been left untheorized in these accounts. The dispersed sentences and paragraphs that implicate the public call out for more attention in their stark contrast to the full texts and chapters that unpack the relationship between the federal government and Japanese Canadians. Since there has been no examination of the public in redress literature, this thesis addresses the following questions: "What is the public referred to in redress discourse?" and "How is the public involved in redress?" In order to answer these questions I created a theoretical framework that informed my analysis particularly on the historical complexity of redress, the involvement of discourse and understandings of publics. Genealogies, as articulated by Michel Foucault (1977; 1991), are critical projects that emphasize the narrowness of the historical lens through which we view the past.