Papatūānuku (Earth Mother) and the Grammar of Private Property
Using Kafka’s story ‘In the Penal Colony’ as an analogy, this paper details the processes by which land became commodified and subject to the inscriptions of private property in Te Waipounamu/The South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand. In this operation the law is a kind of harrow for homogenising the earth, rendering it as abstract space, as a preparation for incisions of discrete cadastral boundaries.
Simon first provides an account of a relationship to the land expressed by tikanga/first law where the land is understood as an intricate web of living relationships. Settlers were intent on fixing this dynamic system both in time and place in order to make possible absolute alienation through exchange.
Simon traces the processes whereby land is transformed into a commodity and bears the inscription of this process in its parcelled-out form as the orthogonal grid of private property. The number eight wire fence (the fencing material of choice for settler agri-containment) becomes the earthly shadow of the ideal boundary of private property.
About the speaker
Simon Barber (Kāi Tahu) is a lecturer in Sociology at Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka | University of Otago. He is a student of Indigenous thought and politics, Marxist and critical theory, black studies, communism, and conjunctions thereof. He completed his Masters at the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London and his doctorate in the Centre for Research Architecture, also at Goldsmiths. As part of his doctoral research he undertook a postgraduate diploma in Ahunga Tikanga (Māori Laws and Philosophy) at Te Wānanga o Raukawa in Ōtaki. Simon co-edited a book with Miri Davidson (Through That Which Separates Us, 2021) centred around themes of deportation, incarceration, and colonialism. In a series of academic articles he continues to think through and describe possible contours of an Indigenous historical materialism. Simon is a researcher for Economic and Social Research Aotearoa and is a member of the Māori Association of Social Science.
This lecture is presented by the School of Architecture, Design, and Planning as the public keynote lecture of the UHPH2024 conference.
Image: Taranaki, New Zealand. Source: Wikimedia Commons