We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
"Trafficking in Seeds": War Bride, Biopolitics,and Asian American Spectralityin Ruth Ozeki's All Over Creation.
- Authors
Hsiu-chuan Lee
- Abstract
Taking a cue from Pheng Cheah's discussion of nationalism's paradoxical relation to life and death and his invocation of the idea of spectral haunting (in light of the Deleuzian "nonorganic vitalism")as the genuine source of life in postcolonial cultures, this article conceivesa life-begetting Asian American ethno-politics via a reading of the ethno-and biopolitics represented in Ruth Ozeki's novel All Over Creation. I argue that All Over Creationintervenes in the discussion of Asian American ethno-politics of life and death not simply because it engages with food politics and advocates agricultural biodiversity, but also because it creates narrative linkages between biodiversity and ethno-diversity. First, by telling the story of a Japanese war bride, All Over Creation brings to the fore Japanese war bridesto emphasize their significance as the "ghostly figures"—or "random seedlings"—occupying the margins of both Asian American and white communities. Moreover, the novel introduces "seed-dissemination" as a(n) (agri)cultural logic that makes "Asian American" less a category of hereditary permanence than an avenue for one to generate and become others.All Over Creationspells outaffirmative life forces that sprawl from the migratory trajectories of people and seeds (or "people as seeds")—trajectories thatbring disorganizing force to the inherited logic or vertical continuity of both agricultural and ethnic cultural productions with lateral networking and changeable relationships.
- Subjects
ETHNICITY &; politics; ETHNIC relations in literature; PHENG Cheah; ALL Over Creation (Book); POSTCOLONIALISM in literature
- Publication
Concentric: Literacy & Cultural Studies, 2013, Vol 39, Issue 2, p33
- ISSN
1729-6897
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.6240/concentric.lit.2013.39.2.03