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Rethinking Identity in 21st Century New Zealand
Art in Context, October 18, 2007
Critical Theory
Social Science is not simply descriptive
It is aimed at Emancipation and
Amelioration
Two culture in New Zealand Apparently in conflict
However, we are an intermixed group – Māori and Non-Māori
SociallyIntermarriage
Can we truly say Them and Us?
Or are we making false distinctions by talking about
Them and Us in this way?
• Colonization/Post-colonialism
• Post colonial theory
Third Space • Rethinking Identity and culture
in New Zealand
• Response – changing the discourse
Colonization
• A time period
• An attitude – and consequent actions
Time period
• 1815 – European powers control 35% of the world’s surfaced
• 1914 – they control 85% of the world’s surface
This situation exists until the end of the second World War
This is the colonizing period
Post WW2
• India – 1947
• Kenya
• The creation of the Middle Eastern countries
• Fiji
• Singapore
Post colonialism traces it’s beginning from the post WW2
period
How to operate in a world freed of the influence of the
colonizers
New Zealand
• A near-unique situation as the colonizers are still here and
never likely to leave
Can they still be described as colonizers?
I believe they can
Leading members of the dominating culture act like they
have the right to dominate
Leading figures in New Zealand still do not accept Māori culture on its
own terms and expect to be able to operate in Māori situations on the
terms of the dominant culture
New Liberalism
• Such as the Resource management Act
Have reduced Māori to the status of a lobby group with the right to speak
But whose views can still be discounted, as long as they have exercised their rights to speak.
So, New Zealand can only be described as post-colonial in
terms of the time period
In terms of the attitudes, and consequent actions, New Zealand is largely still a
colonized country
I want to suggest that a colonizer is a person, or group, which acts
according to a colonizing narrative
Therefore, to change effect change, we have to change the
discourse and we do that by changing the narratives which
inform that discourse
Third Space
Appears to offer a solution
It looks to people to mediate between the two cultures – in this
case Māori and Pākehā
A C B
Narrative Narrative?
No Narrative
No set of “actions to be expected”
People attempting to occupy the Third Space are forced into one
or other major identity
Are you Maori?
The Third Space is a continual field of dynamic
social processes
The Third Space, therefore, remains a field in which identities conflict with each other, in which new identities arise, merge, and
on and on.
The Third Space is a field of
contestation and
negotiation
And Social Change
Identity
How we behave towards each other
Identity is claimed
And assigned
The claim is based on a narrative
And a set of
“Actions to be expected”
The assignee might not share the same narrative as the
assigned
The claimant might not share
the same narrative as the audience
Without a shared narrative there is no consensus
around a set of “actions to be expected”
for any given identity
This disparity leads to the contestation,
negotiation,dispute
and conflict
Meeting procedure
People who can not follow meeting procedure
ie, do not know the set of “actions to be expected”
Are regarded as “dangerously outspoken”
The totalizing effects of the
dominant myth narratives
SaidOrientalism
Traces the creation of two identites
Orientalist – a person who studies Orientals
Orientals
People who live in the Orient
A disputed Identity – not accepted by the people to whom
it has been assigned
The set of “actions to be expected”
of “orientals” justifies the colonization because “orientals” need
“British Government”
the myth-narrative/ action link
New Zealand’s narratives
Pākehā
Moriori
Māori
Captain Cook
The Treaty of Waitangi
The set of “actions to be expected”
of Māori justifies the colonization
because Māori need “British Government”
Letter to the editorMaori the conquerors?So the Moriori are an existing race that predates Maori, and now they have a marae. That raises some interesting questions.Should they sue Maori in current courts for eating them?Does this mean that all of the claims Maori have made as tangata whenua are fraudulent claims?Being tauiwi, I do not understand.If Maori defeated these people and chased them to the Chathams, doesn’t this mean that although Mari predate the European, they can no longer claim to be people of the land, but rather, are conquerors of another race?Cliff Wall(Waikato Times, 26/01/2005 p6)
European Settlement
Hard-working settlers cleared the land and established
“New Zealand”
Gallipoli
“The price of Nationhood”
Oh, By the way, we are proud Maori where there too
Modern New Zealand
Mainstream New Zealand
National Party Leader Don Brash
Māori are not Mainstream New Zealanders
Helen Clarke’s supporters are not Mainstream New Zealanders
This narrative is exclusive
It creates an
“Us”
and a
“Them”
Māori Narratives
Māori narratives are Inclusive
Contestation over
narratives
Revision of New Zealand’s historic narrative
James Belich
Anne Salmond
The Third Space is not a concept confined to post-colonial
discourse.
It is a space of social contestation, of negotiation,
dispute
And ultimately it is a space of cntinuous social
Therefore, it is a useful tool to analyse and discuss current cross-cultural interactions
However, it does not offer the longer term solutions as the
Third Space will only remain a field of dispute
Different answer
for New Zealand?
Rethinking Identity and culture
in New Zealand
We will become one culture
The culture of the British Isle, where most of our ancestors
came from -
Anglo-Saxons
Picts, Jutes, Celts
Romans
Saxons
Normans
Angles
Now we talk about
Anglo-Saxons
There is a high rate of intermarriage and interaction in New Zealand
between Māori and Pākehā
Can we start talking about one culture now?
How can we do that without going down the colonizer/assimilationist
path?
There is no “pure culture”
Said
Spectrum
Māori Pākehā
Distinction between class as analysis
and class as reality
Bourdieu
If you can not show an objective division between classes then
the classes do not exist in reality
If there is a spectrum, then there is no objective distinction
between ethnic cultures in New Zealand
Apply the same concept to ethnicity and culture
If there is a spectrum, then there is no objective distinction
between ethnic cultures in New Zealand
The problem is at the level of ethnicity we conceive of culture as
a unity – one whole
A false conception
There is no pure cultureThey at least over-lap
When does over-lap create a new culture?
“Culture” is a recognizable “set of actions”
This conception links identity with culture
Links sub-cultures to overall culture
Examples from the
Art World
Effects
Changes the discourse