Public Address - Club Politique (Home)

Each and Every Story | Jan 12, 2006 21:46

Some interesting responses to this weeks other post. It seems that the original Being Pākehā was an effort by King to rationalise his position as a commentator on things Māori, and that the 'seminal' blurb on the cover of the copy I have is probably the publisher trying to cash in on King's recent death.

The questions I raised about what it is to be Pākehā raised some good thinking among readers though. What most seemed to indicate is that when the original version of the book was published, it was read by persons who were genuinely interested in both the position of Māori in New Zealand, and of understanding inter-relations between the two groups in ways other than those espoused by contemporary mainstream conventional wisdom.

That's one of the great issues that constantly plague science and the acquisition of knowledge, in my humble opinion. All too often people draw bad conclusions because they ask the wrong kinds of questions. So if you believe that Māori are destined to be assimilated into the mainstream, then you seek justification for the outcome you want. All too often New Zealand history has been written in this way, and King was one of the first writers to try to shatter that conventional wisdom.

Other intellectual traditions do it as well, or that has been my experience of many writers looking at philosophical questions around ethnic conflict/warfare. Mostly this is, for example, because someone looking at ethnic conflict will often begin from the premise "ethnic conflict is bad, so how do we stop it?"

But, under the tutelage of VUW, I quickly learnt that a better beginning is to ask, "ethnic conflict is bad, but it is normal, so how do we minimise it, or at least direct it away from armed conflict towards non-violent interactions?". But I digress.

What I've noticed about Being Pākehā is that it exhibits a common method of beginning to talk about ethnicity and belonging, and that is to establish the point of view of the speaker through autobiography. Pat Snedden also does it in Pākehā and the Treaty, James Ritchies does it in Becoming Bicultural and John Pilger does it in A Secret Country. It seems that by talking about your own experience and history you can establish that you do indeed have a legitimate belonging to the nation you claim as your own. And that's fascinating, because in doing so you're kind of saying that holding citizenship isn't enough, and you're giving a kind of mainstream, non-family whakapapa to justify your legitimacy.

The premise of this process of establishing belonging is that the statement 'I belong' isn't enough, you have to actually run through your history and lineage to prove authenticity. And in this day and age of globalisation and high population flows, that's very important. It illustrates for instance that culture isn't something you can take off a shelf, you have to immerse yourself in it for long enough to build up a proper cultural 'coat'. And sometimes, you have to be a descendant of someone who wore the coat before you, which you develop in turn.

And this premise causes me problems. If King was indeed seeking to justify both his own place as a 'native' of New Zealand, and his right to speak both to and for Māori, then he has actively demonstrated how Māori society is separate and distinct from the mainstream. Granted, and as a reader pointed out, "[Being Pākehā] was a book for we Pākehā who think Māori to be cool. And was something actually acknowledging that Māori culture had an *impact* on our world." But in order to do so King had to demonstrate that he was conversant enough in the mores of Māori society, a society not his own, to legitimate any of his work or opinions.

What King and others have had to do is illustrate how they crossed over from a self-referential mainstream culture into a distinct Māori society, but if every social commentator in New Zealand has to do this we're all going to become very sick of autobiographies, very soon. And this annoys the crap out of me, because it seems to be so necessary in our still-evolving nation. You can't just use race or religion, because as a liberal, migrant nation we are a melange. Which really only kind of leaves language, but even that isn't a reliable marker of belonging, because half the freaking world speaks English.

On the other hand, it is a good premise because it strongly indicates that New Zealand culture has reached enough of a critical mass to allow an autobiography to stir nationalistic feeling. Once upon a time it was the Empire that raised that flag. It's a good thing that our own stories are all that is acceptable to define who we are.

But I still wonder if that means that we're likely to have to favour particular outcomes because of the need to establish authenticity? Ignoring whether you think it a good or bad thing, are we encouraging the continuing distinction of Māori? Are we reinforcing biculturalism as the 'between' place of Māori and mainstream culture?

Big questions people, big questions turned out of many little life stories.

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A Kingly Sum | Jan 09, 2006 20:30

I was given the sage gift of a copy of Being Pākehā Now for the festive season and took the time out to read it cover to cover. I thought this a wise idea as I've footnoted it several times.

For anyone unaware of the book, it's referred to on the back cover as "a seminal book: the first serious analysis of what it means to be a non-Māori New Zealander."

But, umm, without wanting to disrespect Michael King in any way, that summation of the book just doesn't add up. Certainly it's a good read if you consider it an autobiography, but as a serious analysis of what it means to be Pākehā, I'm of the most humble opinion that the book just doesn't cut it.

Mostly this criticism is directed at the sparse 6 pages of a 241 page book that actually talks about the place of the British diaspora in New Zealand. The remainder of the book does kind of prime the reader for King's opinion in this regard, but it still doesn't stand as a reasoned analysis of New Zealand identity.

Like King, I too was brought up in a New Zealand where people felt no great allegiance to the British Isles. Certainly my grandfather may have spoken with pride about seeing a world map coloured red, and Empire upon whom the sun never set, but this loyalty never really reached me. I've never felt the need to make any kind of pilgrimage to London, and will likely reserve that pleasure for a trip in the unknown future.

Being Pākehā Now really only serves to reinforce King's national authenticity, and to reinforce his position as a critic of both majority and minority cultures. In effect, the greater part of the book is a CV, and the "analysis" for which the book has gained renown is in fact an epilogue.

You might note that my disappointment is palpable.

To be brutally honest, King's book is little more than an interesting life story with a blog-rant attached.

I do get that King's intention was to demonstrate how New Zealand Britishness had evolved over time into a new identity, one framed (in his opinion) by a genteel bunch of distinctly 'high-culture' literary and artistic types. I respect that perspective, and recognise that New Zealand high-culture has taken on new and distinctive tones that more than adequately distinguish us as a distinct people. I also recognise the 'low-culture' stuff King also describes, the fishing trips and rugby culture that underpins our society (I was a little disappointed that he didn't discuss that doyen of New Zealand culture, author Barry Crump). But seminal?

I think that what I'm missing is the impact the book may have had during its original publication in 1985. I was of course very young at that time, and was probably being the Pākehā King obliquely describes. But this doesn't change the fact that it isn't an analysis of that it is to be a New Zealander.

What I do agree with is King's assertion that some of the old stereotypes about what it is to be Māori, and what it is to in turn be Pākehā, need to be overturned. But I can't see that anyone has, since the 1980s, taken the argument that Māori are 'more spiritual' or 'more green' than Pākehā seriously. Which is of course when the book was originally published... Regardless, I find his other assertion, that many Māori or Pākehā no longer want to define themselves in bicultural terms, even more difficult.

The bicultural assertion is problematic because there is no other adequate description for the reality of Māori-Pākehā social distinction. Māori society and culture continues to exist because it actively engages with the majority culture on Māori terms, and because it has continued to exist in at times gritty defiance of attempts to undermine and assimilate it. King argues as much in his history of New Zealand, where he describes two cultures developing in tandem since the 1840s.

It's all very confusing really.

I think what King has attempted to do is justify his own place, and the place of persons like him, me included, who do feel a deep and abiding commitment to this country. He fails though, because his exploration of what it is to be Pākehā merely skims the surface of our identity. It looks at a number of variables that make up what it is to be Pākehā, but ends without really engaging with them except to claim parity with Māori in belonging to these isles.

But parity with and equality to Māori isn't what defines our history. In reality our history has been one of Māori seeking parity and equality with the majority, a history whose main bulwark has been their claim to indigenousness. By making Pākehā also 'indigenous', King is actually proving fuel to fires that would blind and undermine the ability of Māori to self-distinguish.

This is in my opinion foolish, and acts contrary to much of King's own work.

I've tried in the past to nut out the way in which to really define the New Zealander, and reached an impasse every time. Who am I to be so presumptuous? How can I, a New Zealander average in every way, really provide a definition to a society of four million? Such arrogance would be breathtaking.

But I easily recognise what a New Zealander is not, and I agree that we are something more than the descendents of colonists. These islands have flavoured us permanently, and continue to give a peculiar body to each vintage, but you have to continue to ask the question, what kind of grape are we?

To conclude, if anything I'm a little disappointed that a book as vaulted as King's falls so wide of the mark, a description on a label as it were. But all things in good time I suppose.

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