Date: Tue, 5 Nov 1996 14:22:07 +1100
From: donna.matahaere-AT-stonebow.otago.ac.nz (donna matahaere)
Subject: Re: non-Western feminisms


>To much to deal with in one message:
>
>"Xenophobia and souspicious demand for indigeneous theory?
>A colonialist attitude?
>Empty-space!?"
>
>All great subjects of debate.
>Donna are you analyzing the situation around you in N.Zeland?  Then could
>you please let us know how and why that "suspicious demand" was born?
>
>Atefeh

I am in desperate mode at the moment trying to complete my thesis which I
guess I attempted to sum up in that one message Atefeh. For the sake of
clarity for the moment, I will try to be brief but explicit if this is
possible?

The contemporary demand for native-woman [itself a highly determined
status] to speak is part of the messy politics of de-colonisation that
inflects the political state of New Zealand as a settled colony. This
offensive gesture then constructs the notion of an 'empty space' where
native-woman can speak. However it seems to me that this speaking is always
pre-empted, that if she speaks her legitimacy depends on articulating an
assumed authenticity that fails to challenge colonial representations. I am
thinking of Rey Chow when I repeat that the PROBLEM is not her image good
or bad, but rather, her continued state as an object to be represented. My
point about this space then is that it is never empty but inscribed with
other's desires. Yet saying that I do not think those who have been
previously excluded have the luxury to turn our backs on an invitation to
speak. How we negotiate this violation remains to be seen.

Presently I have been hired to teach a "maori perspective" of social work
[interesting that I can only seem to get jobs ethnically tagged]. As many
will appreciate under terms like this the gender and class bits are always
absorbed into the race-thing. My own ideas have been instructed by feminist
postcolonial and poststructuralist discourses, yet when teaching the
predominantly non-Maori audience of students they become impatient and feel
kinda ripped off 'cos they came to learn about "us". When I mention gender
I am considered tainted by white? feminism. If I mention class they are
confused as aren't all Maori the same?

This brings me to the type of theoretical xnenophia encouraged by a
resistance to recognise speech if it is not deemed
authentic-native-speaking.

Particular feminist demands for difference in NZ, unproblematically
answered as Maori-woman-talking, then produce the search for an
'indigeneous feminism' that tends to privilege Pakeha women [usually of
British ancestry] alongside Maori women, to the exclusion of Others. Now
there is a history to this 'partnership' that comes out of a Treaty signed
in 1840 between the British Crown and Maori Chiefs. My concern then is that
native-woman becomes the justification for exclusionary politics, that
given the incredible unequal structuring of Maori, this partnership can
only reinforce and support neo-colonialist hegemony.

This is I guess one of the ways in which de-colonisation and gestures for
participation reproduce the original offence. A situation that then also
demands native-woman speak from her experiences, any hint of theory is then
judged as inauthentic or not relevant to the NZ context? In this way Maori
women are assumed to be experiential, closer to the land?

I do admit to a nostalgia for a return of land but this is an economic
necessity rather than spiritual need. Here discourses around Maori tend to
pivot between the noble/ignoble split, where our right to speak at times
forces a type of political essentialism that is disturbing yet necessary
within the terms of representation which are couched in Treaty-based
language.

Sorry if I this is still too much Atefeh, the complexities and
contradictions  of postcolonial identities who in my case were not part of
a diaspora [of course many Iwi were caught up in urban-drifts] yet whose
family have been "landless/homeless" since colonisation, I am most
interested in feminist theorisations of "home" - "subaltern speak" -
"colonial reproductions".

Now not to cut this too short...I am interested in getting hold of Spivak's
"Woman as Theatre"? I have yet to hear if the Library can access it in NZ
or may have to go o'seas. Also can't get a copy of "Home and Harem"? any
ideas? I would still be interested in joining discussions/lurking.

Really must get some work done

donna