The Asianadian, 1978-1985: Hybridity and Resistance in Theory and Practice
This dissertation examines the cultural and political production of the magazine The Asianadian (1978-1985). The Asianadian was the first and only anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-homophobic social justice magazine in Canada. Using theoretical insights of Critical Race Theory, Indigenous Studies, Settler Colonial Studies, postcolonial theory, and the political philosophies of existentialism and phenomenology to develop a multi-layered and overlapping reading of The Asianadian, I argue for the ways in which Canadas first Asian Canadian social justice magazine established the ethical, community-based work of reclaiming unacknowledged histories and cultural consciousness while also disrupting and dismantling signs of destructive Orientalist stereotyping that saturated Canadian culture for much of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This work underscores The Asianadian as the Third Space of enunciation (Bhabha, 1994), or that which disrupts the classical colonial binary between the Settler and Native and generates a new discourse on history that breaks down colonial hegemonies and builds up communities of colour. By situating the The Asianadian as a hybrid text, I celebrate the magazine collective for its interventions upon white-washed representations of Asian people, their labour, and their exclusion in Canada. Ultimately, I demonstrate that The Asianadian introduced new critical insights using art and literature to inform their political consciousness, erupt grand narratives of Canadian inclusion, and to forge interstitial spaces from which scholars such as myself continue to write.
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