Abstract:
How does the University of Auckland reckon with its settler-colonial past and present? This thesis investigates existing and possible modes of writing that seek to know both the place of the University of Auckland and our place in it. I explore three ways that members of the university’s community have chosen and might choose to relate to the site of their learning and research: writing for the university (‘Monument’), writing back to the university (‘Mana Wāhine’), and writing in the university (‘Methexis’). My first chapter pays attention to official University of Auckland texts, in particular the monument of historian and poet Keith Sinclair’s commissioned 1983 centennial history, A History of the University of Auckland: 1883-1983. I consider the ways that Sinclair’s text constructs the hosting authority of the institution and I examine the extent to which this building operation supports a larger settlement agenda. My second chapter, focused on mana wāhine writing, examines Māori feminist strategies of writing back to official university texts as performed by Linda Tuhiwai Smith (Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Porou) and some of her antecedents. I make space in this thesis for the ways that Smith has contributed to the positive theory of kaupapa Māori to accompany institutional critique, thus creating an alternative home for Māori research and ways of being in the university. My final chapter explores methektic writing that seeks to perform rather than represent its complex, contested relationships to place. I take up the term methexis from the work of Australian cultural theorist Paul Carter. Rehearsing the idea that it is not enough to merely learn about the history of this site, I instead argue that we can learn to sit with ambiguity and intervals of difference. My use of the concept of methexis foregrounds emergence over representation and activity over attachment. I argue that learning to overcome the need for attachment, particularly for tauiwi writers, is one way to honour the land on which we learn. I explore these emphases by examining writing such as poetry readings and collective academic writing projects that redirect the hosting impulse of the university toward decolonial aims.