Identity as Commodity: Hulme, Lorde, Mani, and Narayan

From the start, the critical response or outcry concerning Hulme's receipt of the Pegasus Prize for Maori literature has influenced our discussion of *The Bone People*. From Stead's condemnation of the novel as a work by a "Pakeha which has won an award intended for a Maori," to Fee's somewhat more moderated critique of the general project of a White writer attempting to write as Other, *The Bone People* has engaged us in an inquiry into how and whether the author's race, gender, and other socio-cultural identites should influence reception of a particular work. Working within the field of cultural criticism, Narayan has suggested that even though "oppressed groups, whether women, the poor, or racial minorities, may derive an 'epistemic advantage' from having knowledge of the practices of both their own contexts and those of their oppressors," we must nevertheless be wary of "idealizing or romanticizing oppression" in a way that "blind[s] us to its real material and psychic deprivations." Expressing a similar concern for the ways in which dominant discourse may tend to stereotype, abstract, or idealize the experiences of oppressed groups, Mani describes how she has confronted a demand from Western audiences that she live up to a standard of "authentic" non-Western experience that has little or no connection to reality. Both Stead and Fee, and to a lesser extent, Narayan and Mani nonetheless seem to deliniate an authorial space that is off-limits to non-Western writers, a space within which the socio-economic or cultural identity of the author operates as a kind of intellectual currency that can be used to acquire access. Although *The Bone People* does not necessarily explore the question of whether identity as part of an oppressed group is an essential component of authority when one is speaking of certain subjects, its exploration of a related question does arguably provide some insight regarding this issue. In particular, the construction of Kerewin as a Maori, or at least a non-Western figure, requires us to examine whether cultural identity is something that, like a commodity, can be purchased.

All of the markers or indices of Kerewin's non-Western identity are commodities in one way or another. Her circular tower, her collection of Maori jades, her I-Ching divination tools, and even the leisure that allows her to pursue life as an eccentric fisherman/shaman/wise woman have all been bought with lottery winnings. She has rejected the one intrinsic marker of her Maori identity, her family, and they are absent through most of the narrative. Even the scene between Kerewin and her brother is not narrated directly, but is related analeptically through Joe's observation. In evaluating Hulme's characterization of Kerewin in particular, I ultimately must agree with Stead's evaluation of Hulme's writing style in general: "Her uses of Maori language and mythology strike me as willed, self-conscious, not inevitable, not entirely authentic." Kerewin's characterization is all the more striking in how it contrasts with Hulme's portrayal of Simon and Joe. In many ways, their identities have not been acquired so much as forced upon them. Joe's blackness, his Maori name, his family, his alcholism, all of the things that make him "different," are aspects of identity that he has not chosen. Similarly, Simon's "differences" are of an intrinsic or accidental nature; his deafness, whiteness, and general strangeness are given rather than deliberately acquired. Through a dichotomy in the way it constructs character, the novel, in my opinion at least, establishes two separate frameworks for evaluating character action. Joe and Simon act the way they do because that is the way they are. Kerewin, however, chooses to act. Perhaps that is why Kerewin's betrayal of Simon strikes me as even more dismaying than Joe's continual and repetitive abuse. Kerewin gives Simon over to Joe's wrath because he broke her guitar; Joe is portrayed simply as a victim of circumstance.

As problematic as I find what seems to be a simplistic and embedded essentialism in Hulme's novel, I think the way in which the narrative solves the ethical dilemma with which it ends even more troubling. Put simply, Kerewin manages to buy her way out of the mess that she gets herself into. She builds her spiral home by the sea, encouraging reconcilation with her family, and she funds the diving expedition that leads to the discovery of Simon's origins, a necessary first step before she can adopt him. Even Joe's pain is assuaged with money when he inherits. Granted, the narrative still acknowledges the existence of significant tensions among the three main characters, and between Kerewin and Joe and their extended families. However, the emphasis is, in the beginning, on the new start that Kerewin's money has bought, and, in the end, on the cozy space, again one of Kerewin's purchases, within which the various characters will resolve their difficulties. All in all, in spite of its spiralling rejection of linear narrative formality, Hulme's novel offers a conventional Western ending in which money is the solution for all of the world's problems.

Last week, I wrote about one aspect of *The Bone People* in which the book appears to take a non-Western perspective. This week, I find myself more aligned with Stead or Fee in my evaluation of what seems to me to be the novel's over-arching Western concern with a consumer-like, commodified social and cultural identity. Yet I do think that, in spite of its flaws or contradictions, the novel is valuable in how it explores the various ways in which Otherness can be constructed. At the very least, it offers a partial critique of a critical paradigm in which a White author might always be said to write from a position of privilege, a paradigm that glosses over, or does not completely account for, prejudice against the disabled, the disfigured, or those whose difference resides not in their skin but in some other equally immutable facet of their identities. To return to the question with which I began this essay, I think that a member of a historically oppressed or marginalized group often does have a greater authority to speak with regard to certain issues. However, I cannot agree with Fee that a "White writer should not write as Other." Perhaps my faith in the "free market of ideas" is naive, but I think the critical discourse that has been inspired by Hulme's efforts, and the efforts of those writers who have tried and failed miserably (I would not say that Hulme falls into this category) to write the experiences of a culture that they are not a part of, is a valuable one. Writing fiction is not the same as writing cultural critique, and I think perhaps writers of fiction should feel freer to take chances in writing fiction, while readers should take more care not to assume that a single work of fiction is an "authentic" account that can be generalized to an entire culture.