Abstract:
This thesis interrogates the ontological and epistemological barriers modernity presents to the prospect of a new Oceania. Anchoring itself in the work of Epeli Hau’ofa it blends critical theory from the radical Black, Oceanian, French, and Indigenous traditions together to demonstrate the persistence of two structural logics of modernity – aqua nullius
and white supremacy. It argues that these logics structurally inhibit the possibility of a new
Oceania. Simultaneously, it examines the material reality of these logics through an account
of the state of water and Black existence in Oceania under modernity’s colonial-capitalist
world system. Recognising that these logics and their consequences are necessary to the
functioning of modernity, it asserts that Hau’ofa’s call to a new Oceania has embedded
within it a call to end the world of modernity, of colonial-capitalism, a call to move towards a new world, a truly new Oceania.
