The New Caledonian written press and the politics of Kanak culture and identity : continuities and discontinuities in the discursive representation of three cultural events (1975-2005)
Creators: name: Morrison, Rowena Dickins
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 2011
Subjects: subject: PN5639.N425 M67 2011
subject: Journalism Political aspects New Caledonia
subject: Art festivals Press coverage New Caledonia
subject: Kanaka (New Caledonian people) Social life and customs
subject: Kanaka (New Caledonian people) Ethnic identity
subject: New Caledonia Social conditions

description: This thesis presents a comparative critical discourse analysis of the contemporaneous coverage in the New Caledonian written press of three significant cultural events: the M{u00E9}lan{u00E9}sia 2000 festival in 1975, the inauguration of the Centre Culturel Tjibaou in 1998 and the Mw{u00E2} K{u00E2} initiative from 2003 to 2005. Each of these events engaged a particular politics of Kanak culture and identity within New Caledonia's pluri-cultural society, which is internally divided over the question of decolonisation. Each event was oriented towards promoting significant socio-political changes within New Caledonian society as a whole, associated with the 'restitution' of Kanak culture and identity, Kanak indigeneity and sovereignty, and the political primacy of Kanak agency and legitimacy. The analysis presented in this thesis of the discursive representations in the local written press of these events demonstrates the latter's complex and contested nature, both within and beyond the Kanak community. The thesis identifies a number of discursive strategies, each with significant political implications, which were mobilised by the local written press. These include the construction of Kanak culture, identity and 'custom' as either inherently political or, conversely, as a-political and politically irrelevant; the projection of particular models of social 'consensus' onto New Caledonian society as a whole; the selective attribution of agency; the construction and mobilisation of a hierarchically ordered binary opposition between 'authentic' and 'inauthentic'; the appropriation and reformulation of the discourse and politics of Kanak 'accueil'; the construction of particular historical narratives with their selective continuities and discontinuities. The comparative critical discourse analysis of the local print-media coverage of the three events constituted by M{u00E9}lan{u00E9}sia 2000, the Centre Culturel Tjibaou and the Mw{u00E2} K{u00E2} illustrates the way in which certain discursive strategies can have ambivalent political effects, and have often been mobilised for highly divergent political ends. The analysis also demonstrates the print media's predominant resistance throughout the contemporary period to the most radical political implications (for questions of sovereignty and legitimacy in New Caledonia) of Kanak identity as indigenous and of certain Kanak 'customary' structures, processes and actions. Nevertheless, the analysis highlights that, as the local socio-political context has evolved, the politics of Kanak culture and identity mobilised through events such as M{u00E9}lan{u00E9}sia 2000, the Centre Culturel Tjibaou and the Mw{u00E2} K{u00E2} has become increasingly accepted and appropriated by the local written press, notwithstanding the fact that this acceptance and appropriation remains partial and strategic. A consideration and comparison of the tensions and issues associated with these three events in their respective socio-political contexts, through an analysis of their contemporaneous treatment in the local written press, is also used to shed light on some of the questions associated with the 1998 Noumea Accord and the ongoing political and social debates to which it has given rise.