Cultural Grammars of Nation, Diaspora, and Indigeneity in Canada

Unhomely Moves: A.M. Klein, Jewish Diasporic Difference, Racialization, and Coercive Whiteness

99 this chapter brings questions of Jewish difference into the contemporary critical grammar of diaspora. These questions might seem unproblematic. Historically diaspora, from the Greek word meaning dispersion, was attributed to the multitude of communities formed as a result of the Babylonian expulsion of Jews from Judea in 587 BCE and characterized these communities’ relationship to homeland, as well as the formation of a horizontal (transnational) fellowship. But in the present moment, the definition of diaspora has become paradoxical. In the public sphere, the Jewish resonances have been extended to describe a range of experiences, both the tragic (such as the Hurricane Katrina diaspora) and the ridiculous (such as the Croatian Math diaspora).1 Whereas in critical commentaries that share an interest in reconceptualizing the category, diaspora’s terms of reference have been narrowed. “Diaspora,” here, has become not only an interpretative device for literary and cultural analysis, but also a powerful organizing prism that includes and excludes particular identity formations. In their studies on diaspora, international scholars Brent Hayes Edwards, Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, and William Safran, and Canadian scholars David Chariandy and Lily Cho clearly recognize the way Jewish experiences have underscored diaspora’s definition. But their proposals for a new grammar of diaspora historicize the relevance and contribution of such experiences: Jews and expressions of Jewishness have been de-linked from the category and thus faded into diaspora’s etymological past. I believe Jonathon and Daniel Boyarin’s worry that scholarship on Jewish diaspora will be “confined to the archives—either sufficiently researched and acknowledged (having nothing Unhomely Moves A.M. Klein, Jewish Diasporic Difference, Racialization, and Coercive Whiteness Melina Baum Singer 100 melina baum singer to teach postcolonial studies), or worse yet, as obviated because there is now, after all, a Jewish state” (“Powers”11) has in fact already taken place.2 In relation to the theorization of diaspora in Canada—and as grounds for an intervention—I seek to draw attention to the reasons Jewish difference has been excluded. I believe the absence of responses is neither a coincidence nor a result of the dilution of the term, but rather a fissure in the way diaspora is read through critical race theory. This chapter tests the limits of the contemporary cultural grammar of diaspora through readings of A.M. Klein’s Hath Not a Jew (1940) and The Rocking Chair and Other Poems (1948). I argue for an understanding of A.M. Klein’s poetics under the contemporary rubric of diaspora and identify, in these works, an overlooked narrative, one that makes a unique contribution to studies on racialization and coercive whiteness in Canada. This chapter insists on the importance of looking back at the racialization of Jews, in order to recognize its historic factuality and the way such racialization raises questions about the terms and conditions forming the perceptions of Jewishness today. POSTCOLONIAL DIASPORA STUDIES After delivering a public lecture (2004) at the University of Western Ontario, Rinaldo Walcott provocatively proclaimed that globalization studies is a white area of study and diaspora studies is a non-white area of study.3 Looking around at the audience response, expressions of confirmation far outweighed expressions of incredulity. I found the simplicity of the double opposition troubling as well as useful, for following the logic of Walcott’s assertion, expressions of Jewishness seem to be placed outside the material of diaspora studies, and alternatively studies of such material would be situated in a separate field of study. Walcott’s comment thus became my point of departure to elucidate the incompatibility between the contemporary understanding of diaspora and Jewishness, an incompatibility, I will argue, that hinges on a relatively recent shift in race, religion, and national identity formation. In recent years, scholars have begun to theorize diaspora as a category of inquiry in studies about Canada, in terms akin to the assumptions I believe are implicit in Walcott’s double opposition. Chariandy and Cho’s commentaries on diaspora have emerged as central in the development of that field Chariandy usefully names “postcolonial diaspora studies” in Canada. Significantly , both scholars’ work addresses (directly and indirectly) the relationship between Jews and Jewishness and diaspora’s reconception of diaspora. unhomely moves 101 In “Postcolonial Diasporas,” Chariandy succinctly puts forth the field’s broad concerns as addressing the “profound socio-cultural dislocations resulting from modern colonialism and nation-building.” Foregrounding the theoretical possibilities of diaspora, he writes: That diaspora studies...