Theorising the Chinese Diaspora: Chinese Canadian and Chinese Australian Narratives Regina W. Lee BA (Hons) (Murdoch University) Dissertation submitted for examination for the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy in English April 2005 DECLARATION The work in this dissertation is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, original, except as acknowledged in the text. The material has not been submitted, either in whole or in part, for a degree at this or any other university. ........................................ Regina W. Lee ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For seeing me through to the end I owe heartfelt thanks to: My supervisor Professor Vijay C. Mishra for his encouragement, direction and support, persistence, patience and optimism throughout. Colleagues, friends and family for all their compassion and well wishes. ABSTRACT This dissertation presents a study of Chinese diasporic narratives from Canada and Australia and examines the formation and negotiation of diasporic cultural identity and consciousness. Drawing upon theoretical discussions on diasporas in general, it investigates how the Chinese diaspora is imagined and represented, as a visible minority group, within the context of the multicultural nation state. This dissertation begins with a taxonomy of the modes of explaining diaspora and offers three ways of theorising diasporic consciousness. In analysing the filmic and fictional narrative forms of the Chinese in Canada and Australia, the practices of cultural self- representation and of minority group participation and enjoyment of the nation are foregrounded in order to advance critical analysis of the Chinese diaspora. While taking into account the heterogeneity of the imagined diasporic Chinese community, this study also contends that the formation and negotiation of diasporic consciousness and diasporic cultural identity politics is strongly and invariably affected by the multicultural conditions and policies of their host countries. The adaptation and manifestation of minority groups’ cultural practices are thus a matter of social, cultural and political contingencies more often aligned with dominant cultural expectations and manipulations than with the assertiveness of more empowered minority group participation. This dissertation therefore argues for a broader and more complex understanding of diasporic cultural and identity politics in the widespread attempts to merge and incorporate minority group narratives into the key foundational (‘grand’) narratives of the white nation state. The importance of reinscribing Chinese diasporic histories into the cultural landscapes of their receiving countries is moreover increasingly propelled by the speed and momentum of globalisation that has resulted in the growing number of multicultural societies on the one hand but also led to the homogenisation of cultural differences and diversities. In focussing on the fictional and filmic narratives from Canada and Australia, the diversity of the Chinese diasporic community and their conditions are emphasised in order to reflect upon the differences in the administration and practice of multiculturalism in these two countries. The comparative reading of Chinese-Canadian and Chinese- Australian novels and films locates its analysis of notions of ‘homeland’ and belonging, community and national and cultural citizenship within the context of the development and negotiation of diasporic identity politics. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Rethinking/theorising Diasporas PART A: DIASPORAS IN GENERAL 42 Chapter 1 Theorising Diasporas 43 Chapter 2 Theorising the Chinese Diaspora 96 PART B: THE CHINESE DIASPORA IN CANADA 153 Chapter 3 ‘What makes a good ‘Chinese-Canadian’ novel?’ Internal/ised outcasts, authentics 154 and bananas in Disappearing Moon Café and Banana Boys Chapter 4 Performing Chineseness: Renegotiating Diasporic Chinese Identities in 2 Chinese 209 Canadian films PART C: THE CHINESE DIASPORA IN AUSTRALIA 257 Chapter 5 Neither Here Nor There: The Fractured Existence of Diasporas in Birds of Passage 258 and The Eastern Slope Chronicle Chapter 6 Floating Lives: Chinese-Australians Re-presented in Floating Life and Sadness 306 CONCLUSION 348 BIBLIOGRAPHY 370 INTRODUCTION Rethinking/theorising Diasporas Ten years ago Ien Ang wrote an article entitled “On Not Speaking Chinese”1 in which she raised several issues concerning diasporic identity. Of special note is the fact that she began her essay with an autobiographical narrative about Chineseness “to illuminate the very difficulty of constructing a position from which [she] can speak as an (Overseas) Chinese” (2001: 24). In so doing, she highlighted “the notion of [the] precariousness of identity” while signalling “the indeterminacy of Chineseness as a signifier for identity” (2001: 24). For Ang, the syncretic meanings of “diasporic Chineseness” are the result of the irreducible specificity of diverse and heterogeneous hybridisations in dispersed temporal and spatial contexts. This in turn means that the unevenly scattered imagined community of the diaspora itself cannot be envisioned in any unified or homogeneous way. (2001: 36) The heterogeneity of diasporic Chinese communities has been attested to in earlier works such as Lynn Pan’s Sons of the Yellow Emperor: The Story of the Overseas Chinese (1990) and Wang Gungwu’s China and the Chinese Overseas (1991). In Sons of the Yellow Emperor we are told that “[t]he overseas Chinese world ... was very far from a microcosm of the Chinese world, for they were mostly people from the two maritime provinces who migrated overseas” (Pan, 1990: 17). Wang’s book identifies four main patterns of Chinese migration, which he names, in chronological order, as trader pattern (“huashang”), coolie pattern (“huagong”), sojourner pattern (“huaqiao”) and descent or re-migrant pattern (“huayi”) (Wang, 1991: 4-12). These 1 patterns have undergone numerous transformations and modifications over time — the coolie pattern, for instance, constituted a discrete historical period (Wang, 1991: 21) — so much so that a single point of reference no longer exists whenever the term “Overseas Chinese” is invoked. To demonstrate this point, Wang draws upon China’s distinction between “Foreign Chinese” and “Overseas Chinese”, where “Foreign Chinese” specifically refers to “the large majority of those who are foreign nationals but of Chinese descent”, while “Overseas Chinese” addresses “the small minority of Chinese nationals who more or less permanently reside abroad” (Wang, 1991: 289). The polysemic nature of Chineseness, however, has its limits, which are contained in the idea of diaspora, defined by Ang as “the (imagined) condition of a ‘people’ dispersed throughout the world, by force or by choice” (Ang, 2001: 25). Pan gestures towards this notion of diaspora when she describes the ‘imagined community’ idealised by migrant Chinese: To assume that all those who bear the same surname share a common origin is patently absurd, but the idea that every Li, say, is related to every Li from the same region has nevertheless a tenacious hold on the minds of the Chinese. As we shall see, one of the most remarkable of the social structures evolved by the immigrant Chinese were ‘same- surname’ associations, groupings of men bearing a common surname. A consciousness of shared origin no doubt compensated for the feeling of being lost in a new country. (Pan, 1990: 12; italics mine) The importance of the ‘same-surname associations’, sometimes known also as clan associations, cannot be underestimated because, more than the consciousness of shared origins, it is the commonality of their ‘dispersed’ condition that serves as a unifying experience for immigrant Chinese in foreign countries. To return, however, 2 to Ang’s essay, we note that having first established the irreducible heterogeneity of the Chinese diaspora, she then attempts to unravel “some of the possibilities and problems of the cultural politics of diaspora” (2001: 25), and to identify the common ground shared by most general theories of diasporas. Ien Ang’s intervention in the cultural politics of diaspora is invaluable and this dissertation, too, engages with what she has termed the “possibilities and problems” (2001: 25) of Chinese diaspora politics. However, it will look specifically at the hybrid spaces and practices of diasporic Chinese in the multicultural societies and nation-states of Canada and Australia. To give the Chinese diasporic experience a rather different context, it is argued that the fact of multiculturalism serves to problematise the issue of diasporic identity politics, at both community and individual levels. Identity politics therefore gets caught up with the history of colonisation and its postcolonial critique as well as with the larger issues of hybridity and ethnic collectivity. These aspects of diasporic cultural-identity politics, already signalled in Ang’s essay, form the backdrop upon/against which this dissertation manoeuvres and performs its analysis of Chinese diasporic cultural practices and productions. It is the aim of this dissertation to rethink the notions and implications of Chineseness for those in the diaspora. It follows, therefore, that the need to reconsider general theories of diasporas and of the Chinese diaspora in particular becomes urgent. To this end, this dissertation draws upon Ang’s work for an informed engagement with Chineseness and diaspora; however, it also contends that conceptualisations and manifestations of hybridity2 — as a cultural practice and product, as