Narratives of 'Kanak identity' in New Caledonia - its concepts and history of Kanak identity struggle

Abstract

The thesis aims to explore and represent 'Kanak identity' multi-dimensionally through the discourses of local people, composed of three kinds of narrative, narrative of community, culture and nation. Narrative of community reveals that identity concepts at the level of traditional community are relationally and collectively oriented with the clan as its base and that its boundary is porous. Secondly, narrative of culture discloses that their identity concepts at the ethnic level are synonymous with culture based on custom and that its boundary is strategically demarcated. In these narratives of community and culture, the concepts of Kanak identity prove to be constructed dually in community and culture: while the former is the base of their identity, the latter unites fragmented Kanak society. Thirdly, narrative of nation proves that the Kanak identity claim is the key concept of their struggle for decolonization of New Caledonia to recover their rights. French colonization dehumanized the Kanak and deprived them of their rights and dignity so that they had to politically and culturally assert Kanak identity vis-a-vis France and others. While struggling for the recovery of their rights, which are conceived within the modern norm of the nation-state, they tried to restore their identity as a symbol representing the autochthonous people as a whole or as a symbol of a nation. The history of Kanak struggle for identity demonstrates how Kanak identity has been shaped and is being reshaped through the discourses of the people, which prove to be the narrative of 'emergence' and not of 'entropy', if I borrow Clifford's terminology (1988: 14, 16).