negotiating biculturalism:CULTURAL PRACTICES THROUGH LANGUAGE

dr. bronwyn campbellTe Mata o Te Tau Thursday seminar12th October, 2006

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rumaki reo

• mihimihi, pepeha• whakamarama te kaupapa

ko te ihi me te mana o ō tātou tipuna kei roto i te reo maori

• ‘tikanga rua’ = tikanga Tiriti/Treaty• kaupapa pākehā • whakaaro a Jacques Derrida• kati, ka huri

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overview

reality constructed through language

• Research foundations/brief findings

• deconstruction, cultural specificities

• Tiriti/Treaty

• positioning & subjectivities

• māori/pākehā

• reflexivities

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deconstruction

• Jacques Derrida –French philosopher

• writerly and readerly (Barthes, 1977/1988)

• “simultaneous presence” (Derrida, 1996/1998) eg Tiriti/Treaty as both/and

• disrupt mutually exclusive dichotomy of either/or

• grammatical tools to disrupt eurocentric reading– footnotes, scare quotes, italicise

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deconstruction

• eurocentric epistemology/mātauranga but with ability to critique

• trade ‘objective fact’ for subjective reading eg writing history of biculturalism

• ownership, definition, and imposition • challenges eurocentric monologue of

empirical science• disrupts (universal) truth

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deconstruction

• Deconstruction a process of critique

• reveals the processes of construction

• questions taken-for-granted & reveals socio-political processes & consequences of texts/discourses

• deconstructs oppositions themselves and questions such systems

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Tiriti/Treaty

• kawenata/covenant

• foundations for partnership

• versions and mutuality

• 3Ps without tino rangatiratanga?

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positioning research

• ethnocentric, normalise biculturalism • kaupapa Tiriti/Treaty –kaupapa māori? Te Kore

• kaupapa wiwi/french post-structuralism

• history & politics important, future behind• disrupting ‘mainstream’ assumptions;

cultural monologism

• acknowledge the vulnerability

• acknowledge essentialising talk

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pākehā subjectivities

• ‘nga matatini pākehā’– synonymous with colonial?– fluid, flexible and changing– post-colonial pākehā– ‘origin’? meaning? question logocentrism– pākehā as a māori signifier; pā/ke/hā māori/pākehā

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māori/pākehā

• mutual ethnogenesis• māori have other ways of identifying

– whānau/hapū/iwi

• fluid and dynamic relationships• positioning not definitive or universalising• multiplicities capitalising: noun or adjective

• bicultural practice: fluid, dynamic, relationships not essential knowledge

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gift of selfhood

The gift that the other gives us is our own selfhood. Yet when the other declines our offer to roll over and play dead, this is a gift we may not want to receive. As long as the others quietly submitted to our own determination of who they were, we would gladly accept the gift of our selfhood that they provided … It is when the other’s gift forces us to take a second look at ourselves, however, that many balk at the selfhood they are now asked to consider (Sampson, 1993, p. 155)

• positioning eg mainstream/other; colonisers/colonised

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research reflexivity

• i have traded ‘identities’ (I) for subjectivities (i)• burst logocentrism to reveal a contextualised

and changing constitution of realities through language

• challenge the problematics of language and not the ‘essence’ of people racist language

• remain open to the ever-changing readings that exist within my subjectivities (i/I)

• challenged/obligated to have personal agency.