DISCOURSES OF MULTICULTURALISM AITD CONTEMPORARY ASIAN.AUSTRALIAN LITERATURE Yvette Ek Hiang Tan Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of PhilosoPhY in the Department of English Adelaide UniversitY April 2003 ll TABLE OF CONTENTS TITLE PAGE I TABLE OF CONTENTS.... ll ABSTRACT. ....... .1rr-1v DECLARATION..... v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I INTRODUCTION r-25 2..}vEMUSTLAUGHATOURSELVESORDIE''-HUMOURAS RESISTANCE... ... ..26-62 3 LOOKING DIFFE,RENCE: RE-THINKING DIFFERENCE... 63 93 4 THE 'AUSTRALIAN WAY' - THE ONLY WAY? READING DIFFERENCE IN SUBURBIA/AUSTRALTA. ....94-127 5 THE SWEET AND SOUR _ FooD, MULTICULTURALISM AND r28-169 ASIAN-AUSTRALIAN IDENTITY. 6 TTIE ASIAN-AUSTRALIAN FAMILY _ FEUDS AND FAILINGS. ...170-2OO 7 . ASIAN-AUSTRALIAN' - \ryALKING TTIE TIGHTROPE. HYBRIDITY, INTER-MARRIAGE, AND IDENTITY .201-224 8 CONCLUSION .225-232 LIST OF WORKS CITED ...233-258 lu ABSTRACT Using the range of discourses that have been used to represent the "Asian-Australian" in contemporary Australian Literature, my thesis examines how the continual severing, realignment and recombination of multicultural discourses have influenced Asian- Australian writings. In addition, I will undertake a critical analysis of the discursive processes by which objects and identities are formed or given meaning in contemporary Australian literature by writers of Asian ancesfty. The texts used in the thesis include, Adib Khan's Seasonal Adjustments (199a) and Solitude of Illusions (L996); Yasmine Gooneratne's A Change of Skies (1991) and Pleasures of Conquest (1996); Teo Hsu Ming's Love and Vertigo (2000); Simone Lazaroo's The World Waiting to be Made 099Ð; Ang Chin Geok's Wind and Water (1997); Christopher Cyrill's The Ganees and its Tributaries (1993); and Chandani Lokuge's If the Moon Smiled (2000). Incorporating a concise look at contemporary multiculturalism in Australia, the ,'Introduction" Chapter 1 also considers the emergence of Asian-Australian studies and literature as a different language, vocabulary and conceptual framework. The second chapter, "We Must Laugh at Ourselves or Die - Humour as Resistance" examines irony and satire as forms of resistance and literary subversion. The third chapter, "Looking IV Different: ReJooking Difference" goes on to posit a re-thinking of Australia's and Asia's construction of identity and identification in an increasingly postmodern world. It focuses on the "particular historical conditions and the specific trajectories through which actual social subjects become incommensurably different and similar" (Ang "Migration" 4). The fourth chapter "The 'Australian Way' - the Only Way? Reading Difference and Multiculturalism in Suburbia / Australia" investigates the racial dynamics within that most 'Australian' of environments, suburbia. The frfth chapter, "Tell Me What You Eat, and I Will Tell You What You Are - Food, Multiculturalism and Asian-Australian ldentity" analyses the function and significance of food as metaphors, and food as a code expressing a "pattern of social relations". The sixth chapter, "Family - Feuds and Failings" looks at representations of the Asian- Australian family. The seventh and final chapter, "'Asian-Australian' - Walking the Tightrope" focuses on Asian-Australians of mixed descent in particular, because they are the physical and literal embodiment of hybridity. This chapter also discusses issues such as intermarriage, interracialism, racism and identity. VI ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I acknowledge the invaluable assistance of my supervisor, Dr. Mandy Treagus as well as the support of Dr Amanda Nettlebeck, Dr. Susan Hosking and Mr Alan Kreig (research librarian at the Barr Smith Library, Adelaide University). I also wish to thank Dr. Diane Schwerdt for publishing possibilities; to Dr. Tseen Khoo (University of Queensland), Dr. Chandani Lokuge (Monash University), Dr. John Eustace (Acardia University, Canada), well as Dr. Neil Brooks 'Western and Dr. Teresa Hubel (University of Ontario, Canada) for help with information, feedback and advice. Mr. Rodney Noonan, Mr. Robert Houghton and Ms Karolyne Quinn have also contributed to the successful completion of this thesis. I am grateful to Adelaide University for an Adelaide Scholarship International that made this all possible in the first place. Thanks goes also to Adelaide University Alumni and Mutual Community for a travel grant that allowed me to travel to Freiburg, Germany to present my work in 2OOl, and the Adelaide University's Faculty of Humanities and Social Science for a Research Abroad Scholarship 2OOt. The English Department must also credited for the traveVconference funding made available to me. Above all, I greatly appreciate the unfailing patience and encouragement from my husband, Dr. Martin Sulzmann. Versions and adaptations of chapters in this thesis have appeared in published form as the following: "Humour as Resistance in Adib Khan's Seasonal Adjustrnents and Teo Hsu-Ming's Love and Vertiso. CRNLE Journal (2001): 14l-46. vll "Looking Difference: Re-thinking Difference". Literature and Racial Ambiguity' Eds. Neil Brooks and Teresa Hubel. Amsterdam and New York, Rodopi, 2002. "Imperial Pretensions and The Pleasures of Conquest". The Politics of English as a World Laneuage. New Horizons in Postcolonial Cultural Studies. Ed. Christian Mair. Amsterdam and New York, Rodopi, 2003. I 1 INTRODUCTION "Are there any Asian writers in Australia?" Bharat inquires' most Barbara Whytebait, the Australian High Commissioner's wife replies: "Australia is the multicultwal country in the world. We have immigrants from more countries than the United States." (Gooneratne 29) answer the Interestingly, the character Barbara Whytebait in A Change of Skies does not actually question of whether there are any Asian writers in Australia. Katherine England observes that ,,[g]iven geographical proximity and the fact that Asian immigration has been going on almost as Australian long as the British, surprisingly few writers of Asian origin crop up in the annals of literature". According to the Bureau of Immigration Resea¡ch, non-Anglo/Celtic authors are Bolkus, the underrepresented in Australia's cultural industry (cited in Lamont 11). Senator Nick former Federal Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs believes that people from non- (Lamont 11). English speaking backgrounds are still "marginalised and compartmentalised" Drawing attention to the significant absence of non-Anglo/Celtic groups in the rubric of ,Australian' literature, Sneja Gunew asks the question: "If multiculturalism is for everyone, why do certain ethnic groups continue to dominate in the cultural sphere?" ("Denaturalising" 111) It Australia has must be noted that Gunew's article was written in 1990. Has this changed now that moved into the new millennium? ,Asian-Australian' is a category that exists within perpetually contentious boundaries. Despite their lengthy presence in Australia, writers of Asian ancestry have met only "mixed success" and are often overlooked (Lawrence). One of the earliest Asian-Australian authors was Mena Abdullah who collaborated with Ray Mathews to write The Time of the Peacock; it was published in 1965. Other early Asian-Australian writers included Don o'Kim with My Name is Tian in 196g; Chitra Fernando's Three Women in 1983 and Ernest Mclntyre's Let's Give Them Brian Curry in 19g5. Asian-Australian literature a¡oused a flicker of interest back in 1982 when 2 gold- Castro's widely acclaimed Birds of Passage about a Chinese pioneer in Australia's heady rush years was a joint winner of The Australian/Vogel Literary Award'' Speaking of Australian attitudes to Asia, Brian Castro argues that uncertainty is "the substratum upon which a nation progresses or declines. Uncertainty is the immigrant, the traveller, the visionary" (cited in Daniel 8). Having experienced cultural displacements, Australians of Asian ancestry are, as Salman Rushdie says in Imaginary Homelands, compelled "to accept the provisional nature of all truths, all certainties" (12). Thus, the work of Asian-Australian writers in particular has a powerful role in articulating this language of diaspora and the new economies of belonging in Australia. Serving as "agents of fragmentation and rupture", they are vital commentators and critics (Castro cited in Daniel 8). According to Alison Broinowski, Asian-Australian fiction started to "fundamentally [change] the Brian discourse" in the 1990s (yellow Indy 225). She writes that for the first time, writers like ,.a .kind (Yellow 229). He Castro sensed of schism' between himself and other Australians" I'ady that was aware that "people [were] looking at [him and others like him] in a different way, and l^ady 229). The increasing politicisation [he didn't] really belong" (cited in Broinowski Yellow of multiculturalism in the 1980s compelled Castro and others like him to closely scrutinise their own difference and their relationship tolwith Australia (Broinowski YeIIow Indy 229). Thus, Asian-Australian literature in many instances not only foregtounds issues of difference, but also makes problematic the discourses of multiculturalism and their various applications. Accompanying and marking this initiative is the evolution of Asian-Australian Studies. It has at the turn emerged as a dynamic and cross-disciplinary field and has gradually come into its own of this century. A "different language, vocabulary and conceptual frameworK' has arisen to create and explain "a new space not marked by 'lack', but rather positioned by the old binaries that it is rejecting" (Mawson).