Thinking Through Biopower: Māori, the Left and the Treaty Worker Movement

Abstract

This study traces the genealogies of two political discourses in Aotearoa, the Left and the Treaty Worker Movement. Rather than providing a history of the Left and the Treaty Worker Movement, I explore the specific forms knowledge of Māori takes within each of these discourses and how this knowledge is productive of Left and Treaty Worker Movement identities. Drawing on Michel Foucault's discussion of race, racism, biopower and socialism and coupled with the critiques of indigenous scholars I argue that the Left's identity is reliant on a series of biopolitical discourses that represent Māori as problematic and ambivalent subjects. With the emergence of Māori radicalism an important shift occurred within the Left that saw a portion of the Tau iwi population, whom I call the Treaty Worker Movement, come to identify with Māori struggle for tino rangatiratanga. Before discussing the Treaty Worker Movement I explore the importance of tino rangatiratanga for Māori. I survey the writings of Māori scholars and give historical examples to show how tino rangatiratanga is related to a Māori worldview, a worldview that in turn informs Māori expectations for how tino rangatiratanga will operate. I then discuss the relationship between Māori and the predominantly Pākehā Treaty Worker Movement. I discuss the alliance that has formed between Māori activists and the Treaty Worker Movement and how the Treaty Worker Movement's support for tino rangatiratanga has had to contend with white privilege and Pākehā dominance. I argue that the strategic alliance that has developed between Māori and the TWM provides a model for theorising how the biopolitical privileging of whiteness in Aotearoa can be contested and displaced.