Molten territories: 21st century articulations of Auckland’s volcanoes

Abstract

Auckland city is built upon over 50 volcanoes. This research explores key selected meanings of these, with an eye to the role of physicality in meaning creation. The methodology includes landscape phenomenology and autoethnography placed in conversation with textual analysis of the New Zealand Herald newspaper. Representational and nonrepresentational accounts are addressed, including ‘nonhuman charisma’. I develop a perspective that combines materialist insight with discourse theory to situate the meanings of the volcanoes in a more-than-human context. The thesis is structured around different methodological moments and actors. Analysis is backgrounded by a history of the reciprocal relationship between volcanoes and Auckland city. This suggests an augmentation of nonhuman charisma over time, as smaller and more distant volcanoes were quarried away and already-prominent cones gained physical, and later visual, protection. My own experiences are used to engage with the contemporary form of one volcano, Maungawhau/Mount Eden. This highlights the centrality of afforded vision and demonstrates intersections with concepts of “nature”. These themes are echoed in the visual presence of volcanic cones when moving through the city. Charismatic volcanoes are also prominent semiotically and tied to local and city identity. This uneven familiarity and affective identification is shown to have formed an integral part of a recent media campaign to “save” certain volcanoes from damage. Other conservation tactics included selective mobilisation of “heritage” discourse, and obscure legislation that was itself granted efficacy through repeated media coverage. The physical and semiotic prominence of Maungakiekie/One Tree Hill can be similarly seen to underlie its persistent and emotive use as symbolic focus for race relation discussion. I note a shift in the presentation of the volcanoes following plans to return many volcanic cones to the iwi collective, Ngā Mana Whenua o Tāmaki Makaurau, embodied in local media by use of “maunga”, articulating volcanic cones as a group with contemporary Maori interests. The importance of a re-articulation with Maori is underscored by the volcanoes’ persistent and affective association with “nature” through geology and imagined disaster. This analysis draws on a bodily “sublime” aesthetic, the celebration of which paradoxically haunts even recent drives towards risk mitigation.