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Boutique Multiculturalism and the Consumption of Repulsion: Re-Disseminating Food Fictions in Malaysian and Singaporean Diasporic NovelsNanyang Technological University, Singapore Food metaphors are among the most vexing clichés of postcolonial and diasporic fiction. But even as they help to promote the marketability of the multicultural, their renegotiation in more self-reflective writing has recently begun to engender new food fictions that capitalize on repulsion as a form of resistance to this demand for self-Orientalization. The curious retention of a marketable exoticizing of food that is indeed as often symbolic, to be rejected, as to be eaten, significantly articulates the growing unease caused by the commercial and ideological exploitation of "boutique multiculturalism" at large, as food symbolism itself acts as a metonym for the consumable exotic. In revaluating the literary potentials of self-irony in the representation of consumption and repulsion as two sides of the same coin, this article draws on diasporic fiction set in Malaysia, Singapore and Australia, including Hsu-Ming Teo’s Behind the Moon (2005), Vyvyanne Loh’s Breaking the Tongue (2004), and Josephine Chia’s growing list of autobiographical novels.
Key Words: Malaysia (fiction) • Singapore (fiction) • self-Orientalization • boutique multiculturalism • food (in fiction) • Hsu-Ming Teo • Vyvyanne Loh • Josephine Chia
The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Vol. 42, No. 1,
31-46 (2007) This article has been cited by other articles:
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