Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Canterbury, 2008. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-79). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Master of Science

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 158-165). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

The thesis examines representations of the matriarch in three Chinese Canadian texts: SKY Lee's Disappearing Moon Cafe, Wayson Choy's The Jade Peony, and Denise Chong's The Concubine's Children. The matriarch is the female head of the Chinese household who is able to gain substantial power by manipulating the assets granted to her in a patriarchal system. Dislocated from her home in China, she serves in these texts as the focal point for the collision between the New World, Canada, and the Old World, China. Confronted by a new environment, the matriarch must decide whether she will choose conformity or identity experimentation. The thesis is concerned with the way Chinese Canadian writers negotiate multiple identities through narrators who must come to terms with the divided loyalties of the women of the past. The analysis of the matriarch's identity shifts is informed by the work of the feminist theorists, Elspeth Probyn and Moira Gatens, who explore the productive potentials of rebelling against binary codes. The thesis is divided into three chapters that discuss how the texts come close to embracing identity fluidity, but cannot overcome the need to reach a coherent representation of the matriarch. The first chapter is devoted to Disappearing Moon Cafe, and argues that Lee's narrator sacrifices her female characters, albeit reluctantly, in order to privilege feminism over her Chinese heritage. The second chapter turns to The Jade Peony and discusses how Choy's child narrators give in to binary thinking by relegating Poh-Poh, the Old One, to the realm of memories to make room for the New Ways. The final chapter on The Concubine's Children explores Chong's desire to redeem a grandmother who wreaked havoc on the family when she defied traditional gender roles. The thesis concludes by determining that Lee, Choy, and Chong are reaching for a multi-voiced reading of the past, but cannot yet articulate a way out. The uncertainty of their representations of the matriarch signals their efforts to move beyond binaries to a state of coexisting identity categories.

The thesis examines representations of the matriarch in three Chinese Canadian texts: SKY Lee's Disappearing Moon Cafe, Wayson Choy's The Jade Peony, and Denise Chong's The Concubine's Children. The matriarch is the female head of the Chinese household who is able to gain substantial power by manipulating the assets granted to her in a patriarchal system. Dislocated from her home in China, she serves in these texts as the focal point for the collision between the New World, Canada, and the Old World, China. Confronted by a new environment, the matriarch must decide whether she will choose conformity or identity experimentation. The thesis is concerned with the way Chinese Canadian writers negotiate multiple identities through narrators who must come to terms with the divided loyalties of the women of the past. The analysis of the matriarch's identity shifts is informed by the work of the feminist theorists, Elspeth Probyn and Moira Gatens, who explore the productive potentials of rebelling against binary codes. The thesis is divided into three chapters that discuss how the texts come close to embracing identity fluidity, but cannot overcome the need to reach a coherent representation of the matriarch. The first chapter is devoted to Disappearing Moon Cafe, and argues that Lee's narrator sacrifices her female characters, albeit reluctantly, in order to privilege feminism over her Chinese heritage. The second chapter turns to The Jade Peony and discusses how Choy's child narrators give in to binary thinking by relegating Poh-Poh, the Old One, to the realm of memories to make room for the New Ways. The final chapter on The Concubine's Children explores Chong's desire to redeem a grandmother who wreaked havoc on the family when she defied traditional gender roles. The thesis concludes by determining that Lee, Choy, and Chong are reaching for a multi-voiced reading of the past, but cannot yet articulate a way out. The uncertainty of their representations of the matriarch signals their efforts to move beyond binaries to a state of coexisting identity categories. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Abstract : The following dissertation provides a comparative analysis of four Québécois and Canadian literary authors—Fulvio Caccia, Ying Chen, Wayson Choy, and Lawrence Hill—and the manner in which they have responded through varied use of genre to present-day racial and ethnic discourse, as it occurs within both wider society and the Canadian and Québécois literary institutions more specifically. The dissertation begins with an introductory chapter that takes up the central concepts that inform the study, namely, those of ethnic literature, écriture migrante, race, ethnicity, hybridity, transculture, and comparative literature. The main body of the dissertation is divided into two parts, the first dealing with the francophone authors Caccia and Chen, the second with the anglophone authors Choy and Hill. In the first part, the writers are shown to employ defamiliarizing and ‘unreadable’ literary strategies drawn from the nouveau roman (or French new novel) and fantastic literary genres in an effort to resist common understandings of race and ethnicity, with the creation of a universal, deracialized literary space resulting to differing degrees in each case. In the second part, the study focuses on the use that Choy and Hill have made of more traditional and readable literary forms—realist and autobiographical in nature—in the attempt not so much to reject outright the discourse of race and ethnicity but to resignify the meaning of these latter terms in ways that allow for the production of a more open sense of identity. In this regard, by informing and historicizing certain cultural realities (here, Chinese Canadian and African Canadian respectively), Choy and Hill seek to challenge the reductive views that have in the past affected these often marginalized segments of Canadian society. Ultimately, the dissertation attempts to explore how the four authors in question participate in a shared project of sorts through their contestation of dominant racial and ethnic discourse, despite the different stylistic approaches they may take. A secondary aspect of the project addresses, through recourse to reader-response theory, some of the difficulties that may arise when a mainstream readership approaches works of ethnic literature. / Résumé : La thèse qui suit présente une analyse comparée de quatre auteurs québécois et canadiens—Fulvio Caccia, Ying Chen, Wayson Choy et Lawrence Hill—et la façon dont ils sont intervenus face au discours de la race et de l’ethnicité tel qu’il existe à ce moment dans la société et dans les institutions littéraires du Canada et du Québec—et cela à partir d’un emploi de divers genres littéraires. L’introduction de l’étude passe en revue les concepts centraux qui sous-tendent la thèse, à savoir ceux de la ‘littérature ethnique’ (ethnic literature), l’écriture migrante, la race, l’ethnicité, l’hybridité culturelle, la transculture et la littérature comparée. Le texte principal de la thèse comprend deux parties, la première portant sur les écrivains francophones Caccia et Chen, la deuxième sur les écrivains anglophones Choy et Hill. La première partie cherche à rendre compte de comment Caccia et Chen ont recours dans leurs écrits à des procédés littéraires défamiliarisants et ‘illisibles’ tirés du nouveau roman et de la littérature fantastique dans le but de subvertir les lieux communs sur la race et l’ethnicité, avec comme résultat la production d’un espace littéraire qui est à différents degrés universel et déracialisé. La deuxième partie traite de l’emploi que font Choy et Hill de styles littéraires plus traditionnels et lisibles—de nature réaliste et autobiographique—avec l’objectif non pas de rejeter tout court le discours de la race et de l’ethnicité, mais de réinscrire ces dernières notions de telle façon à rendre possible une vue de l’identité plus ouverte. À cet égard, en remettant dans leur contexte social et historique certaines réalités culturelles (ici, sino-canadienne et afro-canadienne respectivement), Choy et Hill arrivent à contester les idées réductives qui dans le passé ont été faites de ces secteurs souvent marginalisés de la société canadienne. En fin de compte, la thèse tente de mettre en lumière la manière dont les quatre auteurs en question participent en quelque sorte à un projet partagé en conséquence de leur opposition au discours dominant de la race et de l’ethnicité, bien que leurs approches stylistiques soient sensiblement différentes. En s’appuyant sur les théories de la lecture, un aspect secondaire de l’étude aborde quelques-uns des problèmes qui peuvent se produire lorsqu’un lectorat de la société majoritaire cherche à lire un texte migrant.

Berlin-based Singaporean dance and multimedia artist Choy Ka Fai experiments with digital mapping, the storage and transmission of choreography and Asian spiritual dance practices. He has built a comprehensive and growing archive of recorded choreographies from artistic, spiritual, folkloric, and pop cultural contexts. It includes avatars of dancers, field and video recordings of dances and rituals and interviews with various protagonists. Choy Ka Fai explores altered and expanded corporeal states and the relationships between bodies and both worldly and spiritual phenomena. In his work, organic, material and data-based bodies appear side by side on an equal level and futuristic and queer potentials of human and digital bodies are made visible. In conversation with Lucie Ortmann Choy Ka Fai emphasises the fundamental importance of the practise of archiving for his work. He talks about his methods of showing and sharing his extensive, collected and created material in constantly new formats, ranging from performance, video installation, lecture to digital games, and how he continues to develop it further. He also reflects on the challenging processes of transferring and translating spiritual practises and dance cultures to different contexts and audiences.