Lecture Reflection: Chinese Restaurant and Diasporic Counter-publics

On March 9th, I attended Dr. Lily Cho’s lecture, “Diasporic Counterpublics: Chinese Restaurants as Institutions and Installations”, which is part of the “Cultural Studies Series” of WLU. Her presentation was very interesting and enjoyable, and I really want to share my experience with those who didn’t get the chance to attend it.

In her presentation, Dr. Cho drew on part of her recent book, Eating Chinese: Culture on the Menu in Small Town Canada, to explore the problem of membership in conceptualizing Chinese diasporic community as a counter-public group. As was pointed out by Alex in the poster, two of the central arguments of this book are, first, that Chinese diasporic culture emerges through interaction and, second, that old and new diasporas are crucially constitutive of each other.

Dr. Cho unfolded her presentation by incorporating a series of art installations across Canada, "Gold Mountain Restaurants”, installed by Karen Tam. The vivid images of the installations, depicting Chinese diasporic culture within the cosmopolitan spaces of contemporary art, illustrated Dr. Cho’s arguments that Chinese restaurant is a diasporic counterpublic.

"Karen Tam's art project involves installation work that uses humour and familiarity to investigate a specific cultural phenomenon, the Chinese restaurant. That is, the "Westernized," "Americanized," "Canadianized" Chinese restaurant, primarily catering to non-Chinese customers in the New World. These are often smaller establishments specializing in take-out, falling uncelebrated amongst the current popularity of Pan-Asian quick service dining and the seemingly more "authentic" restaurant within North American Chinatowns…” ---Text adapted from TAM TIMES, April 27-June 10, 2006.

As there was no food served in the restaurant as an art installation, the cultural elements of Chinese restaurant surfaced. During the art installation, Gold Mountain Restauran, “a number of passers-by couldn’t resist the urge to come up to the gallery while the installation was going up, to offer the artist their own “relics” as souvenirs of their Chinese restaurant experiences” (Sylvie Lachance, Artistic Director, MAI, 6). “Anyone can potentially be a member of Chinese diasporic culture”, Dr. Cho said in her presentation.

Chinese restaurant is the space where Chinese diasporic culture is produced through the interaction between and across cultural divides. The Chinese diaspora culture is composed of old and new thoughts together. Both diasporic and non-diasporic people can be members of Chinese restaurants and Chinese diasporic culture.

Dr. Cho pointed out that the transformative relationship between stranger and the diaspora is important in understanding Chinese restaurant as a counter-public. According to Warner, to "inhabit a public discourse is to perform the transition from the stranger to the addressee of a public speech continually, and to some extent it remains present to consciousness” (Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 2002, p. 77). As such, what makes strangers the addressee of the diasporic public discourse is the transformation of the relationship with others, "specifically, with those others who are the most different from themselves, the foreigners” (Françoise Belu, curator, Montréal Arts Interculturels, 17). It is the strangeness of Chinese culture that invites strangers/non-diasporic people to enter into the space. In Chinese restaurant, the strangers become the producer of the Chinese diasporic culture as well. People are similar despite/because of differences. The relationship between different cultural divides transforms.

"There are two extremes of the meaning of ‘diaspora’ in the past, as catchall or as private club” (Stéphane Dufoix, 2). Neither of these two captures what Dr. Cho defines as diaspora and diasporic culture. According to her, membership is a very rigid condition in conceptualizing diasporic community. She wanted to challenge the community-centered view, by examining the production of diasporic culture in counter-public spaces such as Chinese restaurant. In doing so, she offered an instructive way of thinking about diaspora and diasporic culture as unspecific, flexible terms.

Reflect on her presentation, I find it very intriguing to depict diasporic culture as “counter-public”. In the seminar facilitated by Sophie, we have discussed the possibility of making Cyberspace a public sphere to voice minority’s interests. From Dr. Cho’s presentation, we can at least learn three things: one, use her assertion that anyone can be potential member of diasporic culture to define diasporic cyberspace as a counter-public; two, to explore how diasporic culture is formed not only through people’s lived experience in restaurant but also their mediated experience on cyberspace. Another thing I find quite interesting is why restaurant becomes such a frontier of cultural interaction. We have talked a lot about food (e.g. Marie’s beautiful posts about McDonaldization and Food Courts as Americanized imagined world); Lily Cho and Karen Tam also got a lot of inspiration from Chinese restaurants within cosmopolitan space.

I am really sorry for the delay of posting it a week after the presentation, but I hope that there be something that interests you.