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EIgHT HELEN BUSS / mARgARET CLARkE AND THE NEgOTIATION OF IDENTITy In Part III, I argued that Newfoundland nationalism is a central part of both a distinct Newfoundland identity and a diasporic consciousness. But Helen M. Buss / Margaret Clarke’s 1999 Memoirs from Away: A New Found Land Girlhood raises the question of how Newfoundland diasporic identity can be understood outside of the discourse of nationalism.1 For Buss/Clarke, her preConfederation Newfoundland origins do not preclude a Canadian identity, but rather mark it; in her memory, the occasion of her country joining another is a moment of positive self-declaration and performance. Many diaspora theorists argue that the concept of diaspora in fact subverts nationalism. David Chariandy summarizes that “an impulse to worry the nation” is fundamental to articulations of diaspora by writers and theorists who are concerned by “the patriarchal, classist, ethnocentric and homophobic aspects” of ethnic articulations of nationhood (n. pag.).2 “Diaspora,” then, challenges the dangerous conflation of the nation-state with clear ethnic boundaries; this is what Jonathan and Daniel Boyarin call the “powers of diaspora.” The Boyarins write that “diaspora offers an alternative ‘ground’ to that of the territorial state for the intricate and always contentious linkage between cultural identity and political organization” (10). Diaspora, then, necessitates group identities that exist outside of the place of origin. Diasporas are therefore usually unified by a common genealogical kinship rather than a common territorial homeland. Yet Newfoundlanders are defined by an identity grounded in place, rather than racial or religious commonalities. How, then, can a Newfoundland identity continue to exist once its subjects are removed from that place of origin? In other words, if not by place of residence, how is Newfoundlandness defined and demarcated? 1 4 5 1 4 6 p o s t M o d e r n e t h n i c i t y a n d M e M o i r s f r o M a w a y Frequently, diaspora connotes “ethnic” identification. In her influential 2000 book, Scandalous Bodies: Diasporic Literature in English Canada, Smaro Kamboureli does not in fact differentiate between “diasporic” and “ethnic” literature. “I have refrained from joining the ongoing debate about the semantic and political differences between diaspora and ethnicity as concepts,” she writes in her preface; “although they are different, their genealogies overlap , and I have decided to work with their intersections rather than to offer definitions that could at best be provisional” (viii). While many diaspora theorists have proposed definitions of diaspora that are not dependent upon ethnic identification, in Canadian contexts the terms are often inextricable. Chariandy asks, among a litany of other crucial questions, “are racial and ethnic groups automatically diasporas?”––a question prompted by the work of several key diaspora theorists that reveals the extent to which “ethnicity” and “diaspora” are coupled. Vijay Agnew, in her introduction to Diaspora, Memory and Identity, acknowledges the multiple and shifting definitions of the term, but also indicates that diasporas “create an understanding of ethnicity and ethnic bonds that transcends the borders and boundaries of nation states” (4). I have argued that an important connotation of diasporic subjectivity is a feeling of difference and marginalization in the new home, a condition that implies ethnic subjectivity. If Newfoundland out-migration can helpfully be considered a “diaspora,” are Newfoundlanders, then, “ethnic”? In this chapter, I first work through the complex and shifting relationship between diaspora and ethnicity. I then move into a close analysis of Buss/ Clarke’s memoir, which has also informed her academic work on the memoir form, particularly her book Repossessing the World: Reading Memoirs by Contemporary Women (2002). Throughout Memoirs from Away Buss/Clarke deploys a postmodern memoir form to highlight the shifting nature of diasporic identity as an affiliation based on ethnic rather than national or territorial ties. Finally, I use Buss/Clarke’s work to attend to the implications that discourses of race and whiteness have for the concept of a Newfoundland diaspora. Are Newfoundlanders “Ethnic”? Applying the term “ethnic” to Newfoundlanders does create discomfort with some academics who work on issues of ethnicity and race, as well as with some Newfoundlanders, and the potential arguments against it require careful consideration. Such a claim to ethnicity threatens to erase the history of colonization, substituting Irish and English settler heritage with a myth of indigeneity. For some, it suggests homogeneity and ethnic absolutism, erasing the presence of First Nations and recent immigrants, as well as the long conflicts...

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