Contested Identity: the media and independence in New Caledonia during the 1980s

Abstract

This thesis analyses the discursive struggle in the New Caledonian media over the question of independence during the period of most acute conflict during the 1980s. It seeks to demonstrate that the discursive struggle was central to the political struggle, particularly in its emphasis on the development of discourses on identity which authorised particular forms of political engagement. Colonial discourses in New Caledonia provided a well tested armory of identifications of the territory’s indigenous people which were mobilised in the anti-independence media, particularly the territory’s monopoly daily newspaper Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes. The thesis attempts to demonstrate how these identifications connoted, in effect, the non-existence of Kanaks through a denial of a ‘Kanak’ identity: Melanesians who identified themselves as Kanaks and took a pro-independence stance were not recognised within the colonial identity constructions of ‘Caledonian’ and ‘Melanesian’, and their claims to constitute a ‘people’ were vociferously denied. They existed within colonial discourses as a human absence, and were therefore considered to have no rightful claim on Caledonian political life. In the face of such identifications, the pro-independence movement articulated in its media notions of ‘Kanakness’ and the ‘Kanak people’ which sought to hyper-valorise their identity as human and rightful. ¶ ...