The Location of Settled Diasporas in Nova Scotian Fiction

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This essay makes an important contribution to the ongoing discussion of diasporas, cultures, and identities by nuancing the concept of diasporas to capture the common but easy to over look phenomena of diasporic communities which may be several generations of residence in the host country and still retain elements of identity and difference that inflect relations with both populations around them and also with a sometimes largely imaginary homeland, which nonetheless continues to be a force in self-identification and, sometimes, in attributions of identity by dominant groups.  

The literary examples, by a contemporary First Nations and an Afrocadian novelist resident in Nova Scotia with local lineages generations long are well chosen.  The long discussion of several decades work on diasporic identities and the difficulties posed by dealing with what the author labels "settled diasporas" is clear, concise (impressive given the complexity of the topic), and bracing.  It is, by itself, nearly worth the price of admissions.

The readings of the two novels--meant to be illustrative of the argument and the applicability and flexibility of the coinage "settled diasporas" when applied to two rather different diasporic groups--works pretty well.  

While I think this essay could appear as is--with some very light editing of the sentence around line 317-18--I have a few questions and suggestions that I hope the writer will consider.

First of all, I would recommend more thought be given to a point that emerges around li 97 where the author draws a necessary distinction between voluntary displacement (like that of the Scots Canadians) and violent displacements that those of the Afrocadians.  Certainly a distinction needs to be made, but it is easy to gloss over the amount of trauma--which often becomes generational--that frequently forms part of even apparently voluntary sundering with a homeland and culture.  The move from "roots" to "routes," pace Gilroy, should not obscure that the routes in question are often painfully rough.

Similarly, there is more to be said--around lis 536-38--about how diasporic identity often becomes most evident not in the subject's imagined relationship to a homeland that tends to become increasingly abstract or imaginary but in the experience of a host land that can remain un welcoming or resist including the diasporic community in its fold.  This has too often been the experience of African diasporic communities in the new world, of Middle Eastern (especially but not only Islamic) diasporas in Europe, of Jewish diasporas world wide.  This dynamic is an important dimension of the ways in which settled diasporas remain, importantly and dynamically, susceptible to being un settled as global history shifts and changes.  For this reason the term "anchoring identity" may be the wrong metaphor for what this author is analyzing, since it seems a return of a version of "roots" and turn away from "routes"--to remember that earlier discussion--and runs the risk of glossing over identities endless tendency to drift.  That is how it seems to me, and I do not insist this author agree with me, but I believe this point is already present in and important to this interesting essay.  To repeat my initial point, this essay could well be published as it stands.

One last issue which is more structural than thematic.  I think the essay would be strengthened by trimming the initial "theoretical" discussion a bit and expanding the reading of the novels which, I think, would serve better if they were less illustrative and more part of the piece's conceptual development.

I hope these comments are useful and I look forward to seeing this essay appear.

Author Response

Please, see attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This article argues that a concept of "settled diasporas" as depicted in two novels, one about a Black community in Nova Scotia and one about a Scottish-Canadian community in Cape Breton Island, enables a more nuanced understanding of "historically long-established communities": "In settled diasporas, the notions of attachment to a local identity are reconciled with having distant points of origin. . . . [and] it allows conceptual room to accommodate claims of belonging that differ from those by Indigenous populations."  It is an ambitious article, trying to deal with complexities of identity of communities who have lived for generations in a settler society that has largely displaced Indigenous populations as these newcomers transform "hostland" into "homeland,"migrant collectives who gradually
transform from foreigners into indigenous."

Unfortunately, although well written, the argument is not ultimately convincing for a variety of reasons:

1) choice of texts: it's a stretch to consider a significant "similarity" of experience between two such radically different communities, even if one is characterized as being discriminated against based on "race" while the other is based on "class."  How might an Indigenous-authored or refugee-authored text contrast with these?  Can Scottish experiences of colonization be usefully compared with Black experiences of slavery and racism?

2) the claim that this is "a comparative study between diasporic literatures" that "focuses on contemporary fiction as the main object of analysis, following representational strategies and ontologies which . . . offer a unique perspective on diasporic narratives" is not realized: the two novels are considered mostly in isolation from each other and mostly for what they represent far more than how they represent. 

3) historical overgeneralization regarding complex relationships among white settlers, Black residents, and Indigenous populations: Clarke's invocation of Black - Mi'kmaqs Metis relationship is not problematized sufficiently (is it "special pleading" or substantiated?), nor is the virtual absence of Indigenous presence in MacLeod's novel (is the harmonious, cooperative first winters of Indigenous peoples and Scottish residents only a white liberal fantasy or does it have some basis in reality?). Scottish-Indigenous "intercourse" on a national level is not acknowledged.  Distinctions between "Africadia," Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, and "Canada" are not sufficiently made.  The French presence in Canada (indeed, in Acadia) is not acknowledged in relation to "identity" and "belonging."  Is it not too simplistic an assumption that "perpetrating violence . . . is necessary to the
settlement project"?

4) although secondary sources are used judiciously, the total lack of work by First Nations, Inuit, or Metis scholars is noticeable by its absence, particularly when what is under discussion is "native identity" and "home" for residents of "settled diasporas" (one of the keywords provided for the article is "Indigeneity"!)  How can one attempt to "accommodate claims of belonging that differ from those by Indigenous populations" without analyzing or problematizing those claims made by Indigenous populations?  The writer claims that "In the (post)colonial Canadian context, questions of migration and settlement must be put in conversation with the presence of Indigenous people," but Indigenous people are absent from this conversation.  The final sentence of the article, "The nuances of settled diasporas are to be found in dialogical relationships both with traditional conceptions of the diaspora and with indigenous identities" is undercut by the lack of any dialogical relationship in the article with "indigenous identities."

5) The author worries that expanding the concept of diaspora will empty it out, but to conclude that "an emphasis on roots and attachment to the land" somehow is sufficient to give these two disparate groups of people a "native identity" risks being applicable to any group of people which lives in a place for a long time.  The author seems to assume that longstanding residents of a settler culture must be granted a status of being "at least partly indigenous."  Presumably at least some Indigenous scholars might at least question the terminology of this as well as the author's unsubstantiated conjecture that "attachment to land and
sentiments of belonging are similar to those displayed by native populations

Author Response

Please, see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

NOTES ON REVISED VERSION OF “The Location of Settled Diasporas in Nova Scotian Fiction”

August 18, 2020

GENERAL NOTES:

A stronger article with a more carefully nuanced argument, foregrounding complexities of interrelation. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR CONSIDERATION: MINOR CHANGES

In Abstract

• “hardly be applied” = “only imperfectly be applied” / “only partially be applied”
• native identity = “native” identity [loaded, multifaceted term: flag with “scare quotes”?]]
• “native/diasporic” = “native-diasporic”?
• Settled diaspora = “settled diaspora” [or italics, first time, to set it off as term with special meaning]

Introduction

• Canadian region of Nova Scotia = Canadian province of Nova Scotia?
• Faulty parallelism? “George Elliott Clarke is one of the most acclaimed Canadian writers. . . .” / “MacLeod was born in Saskatchewan, but grew up in Cape Breton.”  [ MacLeod is also “one of the most acclaimed Canadian writers,” particularly as a short story writer.
• “Cape Breton . . . Gaelic-speaking . . . certainly the only one in North America” – Wikipedia: “Atlantic Canada is the only area in North America where [Scottish] Gaelic continues to be spoken as a community language, especially in Cape Breton.” (also in N.S., N.B., and PEI) (“Irish- Irish Gaelic? Scottish Gaelic? - ” still in some places in Newfoundland and “according to the 2000 Census, 25,661 people in the U.S. spoke Irish at home . . . 2005 – 18, 815)
• “comprehensive . . . perspective of the heterogeneous landscape of Nova Scotia’s diasporas” [“comprehensive” is a suspect claim, given that other diasporic communities in N.S. not considered]
• “As the region is ascribed a ‘naturally’ Anglo-Celtic identity” – [does this include Scottish-Canadian Nova Scotians? If so, should that be indicated here? Even if complicated: Scotland as “colony” of Great Britain/England?]

2. Diasporas, homelands, and settled diasporas

• [Indeed, can “routes” ever become “roots,” “hostland” “homeland”?]
• “It is hard to deny the role of Scottish colonizers. . . .” = “hard to underestimate”?
• Footnote 1: “sheep” or “cattle” or both?
• “Clarke’s own approach to First Nations . . . partly solve[s] tensions between black and Indigenous relationships” ??? – solve? Resolve? Or problematize?
• “enables to delineate” = “enables us to delineate” or “enables delineating”

3. The African Settled Diaspora and Questions of (Un)Belonging

• Footnote 3 – “clear cut” – “clearcut”

4. The Scots Settled Diaspora: From Scotland to Cape Breton

• [transition between discussion of the two texts? What are the comparative/contrasting connections/disconnections between these two novels? – although this is at start of second paragraph, it might be more strategic to bring it forward to the conjunction between discussion of the 2 texts]
• “mention to Indigenous peoples” = “mention of”?
• “a clear conscience of where their homeland is” = “consciousness” “awareness”?

5. Conclusion

• “are no longer attached to the ancestral homelands” – [could this be more nuanced? Are they still not “attached” at least to “imaginary” homelands even though their “primary” attachment has been transferred to the “hostland”? or “homeland-in-hostland”?
• “The African novel”? – Clarke’s novel? George and Rue?

Author Response

Please, see attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx