The fracturing of cultural identity is a common trope in postcolonial
literatures. Traditional binaries of 'self' and 'other' are now
complicated by cultural hybridities that reflect the intersectionality
of migrant identities, indigeneity and the postcolonial national 'self'.
Where the binaries 'self' and 'other' do not hold, creative forms like
the novel can go some way towards exploring hybrid and 'other'
experiences, both as a reinscribing and reimagining of the centre, and
as a complex 'writing back'. This thesis investigates the complex
positioning of the hybrid or double-cultured individual in Aotearoa in
the last forty years. While postcolonial models have been used to expose
the exoticisation of the 'other' in fictional texts, Part One of this
thesis goes a step further by applying these models to real authors and
interrogating their representations as static objects/products in the
collective 'text' of media items written about them. Shifts in 'our'
national literary identity can be traced in changes in responses to
'other' authors over time. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the
first part of this thesis proves that there are differences in the
media‟s portrayal of six Māori and 'other' ethnic authors: Witi
Ihimaera, Keri Hulme, Kapka Kassabova, Tusiata Avia, Karlo Mila and
Cliff Fell, beginning with the 1972 publication of Ihimaera‟s Pounamu
Pounamu and ending in 2009 with Tusiata Avia‟s Bloodclot. Part One of
this thesis mixes media studies, postcolonial literary analysis, and
cultural theory, and references the work of Ghassan Hage, Graham Huggan,
Margery Fee, Patrick Evans, Mark Williams, and Simone Drichel. Part Two
of this thesis is comprised of a novel, Fracture. While Part One
constitutes an investigation of the positioning of the 'other' author,
Part Two is a creative exploration of two double-cultured and
dispossessed indigenous characters' lived experience. The novel follows a
Greek-New Zealand woman and a Māori man who go to a rural pā to protest
fracking, or hydraulic fracturing. While the first part of the thesis
explores the positioning of the „other‟ outside of the white self, the
novel aims to portray the effects of such 'othering,' on the individual
and demonstrate how the historical/political event can be a real
experiential locale for the 'other'.
Massive and Microscopic Sensemaking During COVID-19 Times
