Simon Barber
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Simon Barber's PhD research project
Geometries of Life
The central concern of my thesis is the ongoing colonial encounter between M膩ori and P膩keh膩 (European settlers). It seeks to translate perspective across M膩ori and P膩keh膩worlds without subordinating either world to the terms of the other.
The condition of possibility for the work has been my encounter with an other, oroutside, of my own thinking at two w膩nanga (M膩ori places of learning). 牛牛资源 at thesew膩nanga, and living in the M膩ori place of P艒rangahau, has constituted a non- ethnographic fieldwork, or field geotheory, that provides the generative ground of thethesis. My learning at these places enabled me to detail a constellation of M膩oriconcepts, making possible a sketch of some of the patternings of M膩ori life and thinking,and opening me up to an experimental inhabitation and use of those concepts.
In the two chapters following the introduction 鈥� 鈥楳膩ori Geometries鈥� and 鈥楶膩keh膩Geometries鈥� 鈥� I describe something of the basal motifs of M膩ori and P膩keh膩 worlds: reproduction and monetary exchange, respectively. In each account, the central motif described is both a patterning traced by a mode of life and an epistemological diagram of the structures of thought that co-constitute with(in) that pattern.
The third and fourth chapters follow the clash and entanglement of these two worlds through historic and ongoing processes of colonial encounter. My specific focus is Te Waipounamu (the South Island), where my people K膩i Tahu are from. The third chapter is concerned with the way in which the land has become commodified and subject to the inscriptions of private property. The fourth chapter tracks a set of ideas that arrive and become indigenised, finding fertile ground in the land reconfigured as commodity, resulting in an indigenous neoliberalism.
A final chapter works with with the notebooks Marx kept of his readings onindigenous societies in the last few years of his life. It also conducts a reading of Marxfrom the perspective of the M膩ori concepts described in the first chapter. Throughdouble-directional reading I imagine a M膩ori M膩rx, sketching some of the contours ofthe theory she might produce.
Simon is a member of Roundtable three.
