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