ESTHER BRANDEAU / JACQUES LA FARGUE: PERFORMING A READING OF AN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MULTICROSSER HEATHER HERMANT Copyright © 2017 by Heather Hermant All rights reserved ESTHER BRANDEAU / JACQUES LA FARGUE: PERFORMING A READING OF AN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MULTICROSSER ESTHER BRANDEAU / JACQUES LA FARGUE: HET PERFORMATIEF LEZEN VAN EEN 18E-EEUWSE MULTICROSSER (met een samenvatting in het Nederlands) Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit Utrecht op gezag van de rector magnificus, prof.dr. G.J. van der Zwaan, ingevolge het besluit van het college voor promoties in het openbaar te verdedigen op woensdag 26 april 2017 des middags te 2.30 uur door Susan Heather MacLean Hermant geboren op 15 december 1972 te Toronto, Canada Promotoren: Prof. Dr. G. D. Wekker Prof. Dr. G.A. Mak Prof. Dr. R. L. Buikema This thesis was accomplished with financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. To my grandparents and great grandparents, whose stories led me here. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements i Introduction First encounters 3 Introducing the research 4 Dissertation overview 9 Part I: Eruptions Into Knowability 9 Part II: Archival Sense 11 Part III: Becoming Archive 13 Terminology as intervention 16 Overview 16 Naming the historical subject Esther Brandeau / Jacques La Fargue 17 Pronouns and gendering 17 Passing and crossing 18 Ethnicity, “race” 19 Feminist, queer, decolonial: orientations 20 What (who?) is queer? 20 What is decolonial practice? 22 “Genre” and “multi” 23 Context: An Introduction to Esther Brandeau / Jacques La Fargue's 18th Century Overview 26 Historicizing slow shifts 26 Migration 27 “Cross-dressing”: an eighteenth century tradition 29 Policing mobility, or not 31 Status, rank, lineage and “race” 32 (Gendered) difference, opacity and darkness 37 Jewish self-perception 40 What constitutes Jewishness? 41 Seeing multicrossing's absence 43 Conclusion 44 Part I: Eruptions Into Knowability Overview 47 Introduction 49 A preface to a reading 50 Constructing a genealogy of eruptions 54 Analysis of contemporary works 62 Sharon McKay's Esther Overview 66 Situating Esther, Esther framed 68 Esther in the context of settler tales of crossing for children 70 Narrational removal: Analysing Esther 73 From inscription as female to forgiveness in epilogue 74 Speech and agency in Esther 77 Sequential passings, doubtings and outings: Esther's (un)knowability 79 Colonial visibility and the intercultural ideal 82 The born impostor 86 Descriptive accumulation 87 Jewish-heterosexual failure as success postponed 93 Passing as unremarkability? Passive passing, active passing 94 Esther judges the pass 96 Searching to see the multicrosser 98 Freedom for the solitary multicrosser? 101 Shelley Tepperman's Les Juifs de Québec : Une histoire à raconter Historical documentary as contemporary intervention 104 The filmmaker, the context 105 Genre, time and negotiating the present 108 The story: Les Juifs de Québec 110 Intergenerational inscribings 111 Triangulation: The audience's take on knowing one 118 Of bagels and reasonable accommodation 120 Sanctioned crossings: seeing invisibility 122 Intersectionally storied land: toward settler responsibility and 125 Indigenous sovereignty Conclusion 129 Part II: Archival Sense Overview 133 Doubt and Desire Introduction 137 Entering the allure of the archives 139 Following feeling: a heretic methodology 139 SERVANNE Trailing the tax collector 142 Jewish presence in Brittany 144 Finding Servanne, widow baker 148 Labour and the eruption of the desiring misread 152 Habitus, technologies, textures 152 A letter from a widow 154 Choreographing towards networks 156 Eruption in the archive: Rennes and the Augustins 158 Breton networks and Jewish proximity: Saint-Malo, Rennes 159 and the Guillous OF SHIPS, CAPTAINS AND TOMBSTONES Ordinary trajectories and probable proximities: Bordeaux, 163 cabotage and the Bernards Did that shipwreck happen?: Geoffroy, the telling misname 167 “Findings” 170 After this, the fact of a tombstone 171 Summary 173 The Bridge: An Epilogue – Prologue 175 Introduction 177 Troubling knowledge: Eros, amateurism and archival 178 autoethnography Queer time and amateur sensibility 181 Gendering and coloniality in the practice of history 183 Heretic methodology as disidentification 184 The past that is not yet 185 Distrust, affective remains and queer historiography 187 Haunting, the archival search and catalogues of the sensed 188 improbable Conclusion 191 Part III: Becoming Archive Overview 194 Subtext Preamble: The primacy of performance 197 Rewind: Defining Archive 200 Paul Connerton: bodily habits, incorporating practices 207 Rebecca Schneider: debating disappearance 211 Repetition – Recording 216 Being inside reenactment 221 The extreme labour of repetition 222 Making habit 227 Collaborative haunting 230 Becoming archive 237 Endnotes Supertext 245 Endnotes Subtext 246 Conclusion 250 Part I: Eruptions Into Knowability 255 The multicrosser 257 Intersectionally storied land 260 Part II: Archival Sense 261 Part III: Becoming Archive 265 Multigenre as queer, feminist, decolonial methodology 269 Outro: remaining troubled 274 Appendix 276 Transcription: Procès-verbal de l'interrogatoire d'Esther Brandeau 277 Table I: Boats registered in Saint-Malo and Bordeaux 1733-1738... 279 Table 2: Crew and passengers aboard ships registered at Nantes... 283 Bibliography 285 Synopsis 298 Samenvatting 307 Biography 318 List of Maps Map of Saint-Malo in 1733, excerpted, amended and overlaid with information culled from the 1726 tax ledger 150-151 Map of Rennes in 1720, overlaid with information culled from tax ledgers 1734- 1737 161-162 A transtemporal map: Esther Brandeau / Jacques La Fargue's purported movements between 1733-1738 overlaid on a Google map of the region 166-167 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I extend my gratitude to the Indigenous peoples upon whose lands I have created, researched and performed the story of Esther Brandeau / Jacques La Fargue, in what are now known as Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec: the Huron-Wendat, Anishinaabe Three Fires, Haudenosaunee, Mississaugas of New Credit, Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish, Musqueam and Penelakut Coast Salish First Nations. It goes without saying that I am grateful for the life of my eighteenth century research subject. However unknowable they might be, they have touched my spirit across time. I would like to express gratitude to all those who have been inspired before me to work on and from the story. I consider it a privilege to engage with this work, which I respect deeply, even if I argue with it herein. I would like to thank the Department of Media and Culture Studies (MCW), the Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICON), the Graduate Gender Programme (GGeP), the Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies (NOG) and its director Professor Dr. Rosemarie Buikema for offering me the opportunity to pursue a doctorate at Utrecht University. I came to Utrecht specifically to work with Professor Dr. Gloria Wekker, whose guidance, collaboration and belief in me have buoyed me through the highs and lows. Her observant intellect has pointed me toward the surprises of what I wasn't seeing, and her work as a fearless public intellectual shows the way. My co-supervisor Professor Dr. Geertje Mak shared long conversational walks, and consistently posed questions that propelled me to hone my insights. This supervisory team remained committed to my unorthodox scholarship throughout, and their enthusiasm for my project has been precious to me. During the time that I produced this dissertation I also created and premiered three new performance works, and maintained a university teaching practice. While this may have slowed me down, my supervisors showed a willingness to understand that I think most deeply through artistic practice and teaching. For their patience and mentorship I am most grateful. My dear colleague and friend Dr. Honor Ford-Smith has generously shared her guidance, feedback and welcoming home these past years, without which completion would have been impossible. I am grateful for my fellow travellers on the PhD journey, especially Arla Gruda for her sense of humour in impossible times, and Shu-Yi Huang for her office companionship and conversation. The journey was less lonely because of these two colleagues, whose determination showed me it was possible. A special thank you goes to Annabel van Baren for friendship and creativity, and for translation assistance. I would like to acknowledge my peers these past years, among them: Paulina Bolek, Chiara Bonfiglioli, Gianmaria Colpani, Wei Gui, Phoebe Kisubi, Annette Kraus and Read-In Collective, Koen Leurs, Jayshree Mangubhai, Domitilla Olivieri, Rasa Navickaite, Valentina Rao, Aggeliki Sifaki, Katrine Smiet, Mariëlle Smith, Niels Vonberg, Doro Wiese and Marta Zarzycka. I also extend deep gratitude to Trude Oorschot. I am thankful to many archivists, librarians and amateur historians in Canada, France and The Netherlands. The generosity and institutional memory of people managing collections, especially at smaller archives, has been essential. I extend a special thank you to Pauline Arseneault (Archives départementales, La Rochelle), Pieter Flinkenflögel (Stadsarchief Amsterdam), Eiran Harris (Jewish Public Library, Montreal), Michèle Hypolite (Bibliothèque et Archives municipales, Bayonne), Éric Joret (Société d'Histoire, Rennes), Monique Peters (Stadsarchief Amsterdam), Nicole Petit (Clisson Histoire et Patrimoine), Janice Rosen (Canadian Jewish Archives,