He Pou He‘e I Ka Wawā: Slipping into the Tumult of Life and Politics

Abstract

This dissertation examines moʻokūʻauhau (genealogy) as a framework that promotes distinct ways of thinking about the world and structures our engagement in it. Throughout the dissertation, I engage sex, procreation, and birth, concepts inherent to moʻokūʻauhau, and contend that these themes result in the expression of practices wherein life is both the object and core of politics making it essential for aliʻi (chiefs) to manage in order to support a thriving population. Mōʻī (king) David Laʻamea Kalākaua’s reign provides rich investigative terrain for this analysis and the dissertation considers the 1874 election period, the profound impact of the cosmogonic genealogy Kumulipo to his leadership, and his motto Hoʻoulu Lāhui (increase the nation) as useful examples in constructing moʻokūʻauhau as a framework wherein ʻōiwi (native) theoretical and methodological positions become accessible. These topics are contextualized within a nineteenth century Hawaiian Kingdom dealing with the ravages of disease and religious intervention that influenced the political actions and motivations of the time. The political, social, and cultural practices of the past that this dissertation engages were maintained and reshaped throughout the nineteenth century in an extremely transformative period—a period of encounter and collision. New ideologies and methods incorporated with traditional practices acted as strategic responses to these changes and led to syncretic expressions of ʻōiwi intellectual traditions like moʻokūʻauhau. Yet, the prominence of moʻokūʻauhau to the function of ʻōiwi society within this shifting era was maintained if reconfigured, and given new meaning and modes of expression. In that vein, this dissertation brings moʻokūʻauhau into conversation with biopolitics and biopower in an effort to underline life as the core and object of ʻōiwi politics intent on producing a thriving ʻōiwi population.