The Afterlife of Princess Ka‘iulani

“The Afterlife of Princess Kaʻiulani” examines the performance of the memory of one of Hawaiʻi’s most beloved figures, providing a close-reading of a play, a film, and a ghost tour. These sites offer us different understandings of not only the ongoing “aloha” that people experience through the performance of Princess Kaʻiulani’s memory, but ultimately the kaumaha (sadness) that Hawaiians experience because of the potentiality that was not fully realized as a result of Kaʻiulani’s untimely death. The constant performance of Kaʻiulani’s story functions as a form of aloha that reminds Kānaka Maoli of our ongoing connection to our aliʻi (royalty) that is buttressed by a modern thriving cultural nationalist movement.

Aloha in Drag

“Aloha in Drag” investigates how Hawaiianness and aloha can be performed and felt in spaces where Hawaiianness is not obviously being performed or “confessed.” Looking at the performance strategies of Cocoa Chandelier, a well-known Hawaiian drag queen and performance artist working in Honolulu. Chandelier’s performances speak to a frequently marginalized Kānaka Maoli LGBT and local/settler LGBT population in Hawaiʻi, cultivating a shared sense of place and cultural belonging. These spaces allow the performance of aloha in drag, a performance of Hawaiianness that is unidentifiable to non-Hawaiian audiences, but can be deployed as a strategy to resist the ongoing subjection and hyper-commodification of Hawaiian indigeneity.

Introduction

The Introduction provides historical and political background of the performance of aloha and its impact on Hawaiian identity, politics, and life in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Engaging the renewal of Hawaiian culture—language, performance, farming, seafaring—Teves discusses how the affirmation of “authenticity” or “tradition” can work to double-bind Hawaiians and constrain articulations of Hawaiian identity and expression.

F-You Aloha, I Love You

This chapter provides historical and political context to theorize the ways in which the state employs aloha to create an “aloha state apparatus” to discipline, manage, and encourage particular kinds of Hawaiian indigeneity. Drawing from Marxist, post-structuralist, and Native feminist analysis, this chapter deconstructs the discursive and ideological power of aloha to reimagine a necessary and innovative approach to affirming Hawaiian indigeneity.

Conclusion

The Conclusion calls for a reconsideration of what it means to expression Hawaiian indigeneity and how aloha is felt and exchanged within Hawaiian spaces. Engaging recent efforts to “create” a Hawaiian governing entity, Teves discusses the contradictory feelings that arise when belonging is administered by an arm of the federal government. Reminding readers that belonging is contingent and messy, as is all articulations of indigeneity and Hawaiian life today.

Bound in Place

This chapter analyzes what it looks like when aloha comes home from the Hawaiian diaspora. I perform a close reading of a short story in the book, This is Paradise (2012). In the past fifteen years, the number of Kānaka Maoli living outside of Hawaiʻi has increased forty percent, thus creating a division between on-island Kānaka Maoli and those living in the diaspora. This division is exacerbated by a growing cultural nationalist movement that prioritizes land-based forms of Indigeneity. Focusing on the story, “The Old Paniolo Way” to provide a close reading of the quotidian spaces where our cultural performances and interactions support a more inclusive sense of belonging that is not landlocked or tied to touristic visions of Hawaiianness. These spaces are contingent on and maintained through performing aloha and other forms of community recognition. Rather than emphasize an eventual homecoming as the solution to the diaspora, these stories offer an opportunity to animate the kinship networks and Indigenous understandings of place, history, and time that are performed in the diaspora.

Bloodline Is All I Need and Defiant Indigeneity on the West Side

ʻBloodline is All I Need’ and Defiant Indigeneity on the ʻWest Side’,” looks closely at the “refusal” of aloha in the cultural production of a Kānaka Maoli rapper, Krystilez. This “refusal” represents a desire to contest hegemonic imagery of Hawaiʻi as a feminized paradise. Foregrounding a Native feminist critique of colonialism, Krystilez’s performances generate cultural nationalism through the embrace of hegemonic forms of masculinity. This chapter also discusses the creation of Hawaiian performance spaces and digital networks.