Creating Kanaky: Indigeneity, Youth and the Cultural Politics of the Possible

This dissertation considers the ways that settler state structures generate, even as they constrain, indigeneity, difference and resistance. I approach these issues in New Caledonia, the Melanesian archipelago and French settler colony. In 2014, the population will vote in a referendum on independence from France. Drawing on fourteen months of fieldwork in Noumea, New Caledonia, I examine how Kanak youth negotiate political uncertainty and social dislocation through involvement in cultural production--particularly music and dance groups-- officially registered as "associations" under French law. The representations of Kanak culture created by these groups not only reflect but also constitute the social world of indigeneity in a French settler-colony where a Republican model of citizenship often serves to suppress cultural difference. Though associations are French structures for organizing culture and animating civic life, Kanak use them in ways that subvert state hegemony, pushing indigenous difference into the public sphere and asserting alternative models of citizenship centered on links to place, attachment to particular cultural practices (la coutume) and relational forms of identity. Mobilizing the representations of Kanak culture produced within associations, young people position themselves strategically in relation to the French state, the Melanesian region, global indigeneity and each other. In so doing, they formulate distinctive visions of indigenous sovereignty and make claims about the types of futures possible for Kanak people.

In examining how Kanak youth both engage with and repudiate French notions of universal rights and configurations of national and cultural identity, I draw attention to the particular exigencies of the French settler state. Theorizing settler colonialism within this singular frame has enabled me to make an original contribution to literature on Indigeneity and recognition. At the same time, I also ask how this scholarship might be challenged by research outside of Latin American and Anglo settler contexts, in locations where neoliberal multiculturalism is not the dominant state frame for managing difference and granting rights. This dissertation makes an important intervention in studies of settler colonialism, indigeneity, race, citizenship and sovereignty, youth and social change, providing commentary on the dynamics of these phenomena within a French context, from a non-Francophone perspective.

This dissertation considers the ways that settler state structures generate, even as they constrain, indigeneity, difference and resistance. I approach these issues in New Caledonia, the Melanesian archipelago and French settler colony. In 2014, the population will vote in a referendum on independence from France. Drawing on fourteen months of fieldwork in Noumea, New Caledonia, I examine how Kanak youth negotiate political uncertainty and social dislocation through involvement in cultural production--particularly music and dance groups-- officially registered as "associations" under French law. The representations of Kanak culture created by these groups not only reflect but also constitute the social world of indigeneity in a French settler-colony where a Republican model of citizenship often serves to suppress cultural difference. Though associations are French structures for organizing culture and animating civic life, Kanak use them in ways that subvert state hegemony, pushing indigenous difference into the public sphere and asserting alternative models of citizenship centered on links to place, attachment to particular cultural practices (la coutume) and relational forms of identity. Mobilizing the representations of Kanak culture produced within associations, young people position themselves strategically in relation to the French state, the Melanesian region, global indigeneity and each other. In so doing, they formulate distinctive visions of indigenous sovereignty and make claims about the types of futures possible for Kanak people.

In examining how Kanak youth both engage with and repudiate French notions of universal rights and configurations of national and cultural identity, I draw attention to the particular exigencies of the French settler state. Theorizing settler colonialism within this singular frame has enabled me to make an original contribution to literature on Indigeneity and recognition. At the same time, I also ask how this scholarship might be challenged by research outside of Latin American and Anglo settler contexts, in locations where neoliberal multiculturalism is not the dominant state frame for managing difference and granting rights. This dissertation makes an important intervention in studies of settler colonialism, indigeneity, race, citizenship and sovereignty, youth and social change, providing commentary on the dynamics of these phenomena within a French context, from a non-Francophone perspective.

• 2013

• LeFevre, Tate Augusta
• LeFevre, Tate Augusta

1 PDF (428 pages)

1 PDF (428 pages)

• New Caledonia

• Thesis

• Group identity
• Kanaka (New Caledonian people)
• Youth

• text

• English

Dissertation Abstracts International, 75-03A(E)

Dissertation Abstracts International, 75-03A(E)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--New York University, 2013

Thesis (Ph. D.)--New York University, 2013

• LeFevre, Tate Augusta
• LeFevre, Tate Augusta

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2021-10-07