The intimate foreigner : the construction of subjectivity in Maori novels of the 1980s

Abstract

This thesis examines four prominent Maori novels in English published in the 1980s, namely Keri Hulme's the bone people (1984), Witi Ihimaera's The Matriarch, (1986), Patricia Grace's Potiki (1986), and Alan Duff's Once Were Warriors (1990). The principal aim is to analyse the construction of Maori identity both as literary self- representation and as part of a wider process of subjectification in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Maori subjectivity is viewed as imbricated in the ideological assumptions of the dominant Pakeha culture, but as both cultures are considered to be continually re-inventing themselves, 'Maori culture' as a representative category is interpeted as constructing itself through an ongoing negotiation with aspects of 'traditional' culture as well as in opposition to and/or compliance with Pakeha stereotypes of Maori, whether they be valourising or denigrating.