Refuse the Weather: Atmospheric Refusal and Selvage Praxis in the Work of Indigenous Pasifika and Black Feminist Creator Theorists

dc.contributor.advisor Perez, Craig
dc.contributor.author Lys, LynleyShimat Renee
dc.contributor.department English
dc.date.accessioned 2022-07-05T19:58:35Z
dc.date.available 2022-07-05T19:58:35Z
dc.date.issued 2022
dc.description.degree Ph.D.
dc.identifier.uri https://hdl.handle.net/10125/102232
dc.subject Creative writing
dc.subject Native American studies
dc.subject African American studies
dc.subject Afro-Pasifika Literature
dc.subject Cosmogony
dc.subject Indigenous Epistemology
dc.subject Indigenous Literature
dc.subject Indigenous Refusal
dc.subject Pasifika Literature
dc.title Refuse the Weather: Atmospheric Refusal and Selvage Praxis in the Work of Indigenous Pasifika and Black Feminist Creator Theorists
dc.type Thesis
dcterms.abstract In this dissertation, I argue for the concept of atmospheric refusal, a way in which Black, Indigenous Pasifika, and Afro-Indigenous communities refuse overwhelming atmospheres of anti-Blackness, Indigenous genocide, and settler colonial nation-states in favor of their own pre-existing and ongoing epistemologies, ontologies, and cosmogonies. I draw from Maile Arvin’s concept of regenerative refusal, from Christina Sharpe’s concept of the weather as a totality of anti-Blackness, and from Hōkūlani Aikau’s concept of the alaloa kīpapa as a sky path of Indigenous knowledge. I propose the term atmospheric refusal – a refusal of imposed colonial atmospheres of oppression, in favor of ongoing Afro/Indigenous creative work that centers on gender, genre, and genesis. These authors also engage selvage praxis – re/weaving themselves, their families, and their polities into their work to maintain the integrity of the work, the way that weavers plait the edges of a basket, rug, or garment back into itself so that it maintains integrity and doesn’t unravel. The authors I engage in this dissertation refuse gender and genre limitations of colonial models, and ground their work in ongoing forms of genesis - ontologies, cosmogonies and genealogies that continue to generate themselves. A key element of this refusal includes re/weaving oneself, one’s family, and one’s community and polity into the work, and the refusal of binary genre divisions between literature and orature, between literature and craft practices, and between literature and literary criticism, theory, and philosophy. For this reason, I engage with all work by these authors as creative and intellectual work. Following their lead, I refuse Western colonial concepts of genre that would try to silo these works into imposed categories of creative versus intellectual or art versus theory. I refer to this re/grounding of self and community and this refusal of imposed genres and the correlating embrace of combined forms of creative, intellectual, and theoretical work as selvage praxis. Selvage praxis may take the form of poetry with theoretical underpinnings, theory written in lyric prose or personal narrative style, or work with multiple genres included. Multi-genre work of this nature also calls to orature and socio-religious texts such as the Hebrew Bible, the Quran, and Hawaiian and Pasifika texts such as the Kumulipo and moʻolelo, as well as West African syncretic religious orature and literature. Selvage praxis is a key element of atmospheric refusal. In many Indigenous and West African traditions, cosmogony is inherently generative, and tied to ancestry - continuing generations add to the creation of the cosmogony. Thus, the refusals I examine form part of an ongoing cosmogony, which has existed in pre-colonial times, in parallel to colonialism, and continues to exist in ongoing forms that bridge into the future. I tie my framework and methodology to Indigenous Theory, Black Feminist Theory, and the intersections between them, to scholars of Blackness including Christina Sharpe, Saidiya Hartman, Dionne Brand, Michelle M. Wright, and Tiffany Lethabo King; and to Indigenous scholars including Audra Simpson, Glen Coulthard, Dian Million, Selina Tusitala Marsh, Hōkūlani Aikau, kuʻualoha hoʻomanawanui, and Brandy Nālani McDougall. Grounded within these frameworks, I analyze Black, Indigenous, and Afro-Indigenous literatures using the lens of atmospheric refusal and selvage praxis. Overview of Chapters Each chapter of this work engages a pair of writers and examines how the writers engage atmospheric refusal and selvage praxis in their work. The first chapter focuses on the work of Kanaka ʻŌiwi writers Haunani-Kay Trask and Hōkūlani Aikau. I read selections from Trask’s Light in the Crevice Never Seen and Night is a Sharkskin Drum, with the lens of writing by Brandy Nālani McDougall, as activist and intellectual practice, and embodied and aesthetic theory, in conjunction with reading atmospheric refusal and selvage praxis in Aikau’s “Following the Alaloa Kīpapa of Our Ancestors: A Trans-Indigenous Futurity without the State (United States or otherwise).” I argue that these authors engage atmospheric refusal and selvage praxis in these works, rejecting binary divisions between critical and creative work in favor of Kanaka ʻŌiwi centered cultural, aesthetic, and intellectual practices that move beyond imposed Western forms of genre, gender, and genesis. They reject atmospheres which are both figuratively and literally toxic in order to embrace Kanaka ʻŌiwi ways of knowing and being, including the necessity of self, family, and polity. The second chapter focuses on Katerina Teaiwa’s Consuming Ocean Island and work by Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, including the multimedia performance “Lorro: Of Wings and Seas,” the poem video “Anointed” and Iep Jāltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter. I argue that these works enact atmospheric refusal and selvage praxis – refusing Western colonial atmospheres and re/weaving Indigenous Pasifika worldviews and communities. Teaiwa infuses multiple genres, including personal narrative, cartographies, and images into her work to move beyond Western forms of criticism and history writing to an embodied and aesthetic theory and intellectual practice rooted in Banaban ways of knowing and being. Jetñil-Kijiner creates aesthetic forms in multiple genres to re/claim Marshallese intellectual, aesthetic, and embodied forms of knowledge, including the practice of weaving as intellectual, theoretical, and activist practice. The third chapter engages with concepts of Blackness in Oceania in Teresia Teaiwa’s work and Kaiya Aboagye’s “Australian Blackness, the African Diaspora and Afro/Indigenous Connections in the Global South.” I also bring in background from “Black and Blue in the Pacific,” which Teaiwa contributed to and edited, and from Bla(c)kness in Australia, in which Aboagye’s work appears. These works consider the intersections of Blackness, Indigeneity, and Aboriginal ways of knowing and being. I argue that these works engage atmospheric refusal and selvage praxis as well as bringing together Black and Indigenous epistemologies, ontologies, and cosmogonies. The fourth chapter focuses on Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake: On Blackness and Being and Dionne Brand’s Bread Out of Stone: Recollections Sex Recognitions Race Dreaming Politics and A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging. In the context of Black Feminist Theory and Black Queer Theory, these works engage atmospheric refusal and selvage praxis, refusing the limits of Western criticism in order to embrace embodied, aesthetic, and political forms of Black epistemologies, ontologies, and cosmogonies. I argue that Sharpe and Brand refuse the boundaries between critical and creative work, as well as figuratively and literally toxic atmospheres of anti-Blackness, in order to re/assert Black women’s and Black queer ways of knowing and being. The conclusion ties together the discussion of these authors’ engagement of atmospheric refusal and selvage praxis. I provide an overview of the ways that Aikau, Trask, Katerina Teaiwa, Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, Teresia Teaiwa, Aboagye, Sharpe, and Brand refuse colonial atmospheres and re/weave themselves, their family backgrounds, and their communities and polities into their work, across Indigenous, African Diaspora, and Afro-Indigenous communities and polities. I suggest paths forward that build on these practices.
dcterms.extent 216 pages
dcterms.language en
dcterms.publisher University of Hawai'i at Manoa
dcterms.rights All UHM dissertations and theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission from the copyright owner.
dcterms.type Text
local.identifier.alturi http://dissertations.umi.com/hawii:11431
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