Towards a Grammar of Race: In Aotearoa New Zealand
About this ebook
By 'bringing what is unspoken into focus', Towards a Grammar of Race seeks to articulate and confront ideas of race in Aotearoa New Zealand – an exploration that includes racial capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy, and anti-Blackness. A recurring theme across the book is the inescapable entanglement of local and global manifestations of race.
Each of the contributors brings their own experiences and insights to the complexities of life in a racialised society, and together their words make an important contribution to our shared and future lives on these shores.
Contributors to this book: Pounamu Jade Aikman, Faisal Al-Asaad, Mahdis Azarmandi, Simon Barber, Garrick Cooper, Morgan Godfery, Kassie Hartendorp, Guled Mire, Tze Ming Mok, Adele Norris, Nathan Rew, Vera Seyra, Beth Teklezgi, Selome Teklezgi and Patrick Thomsen.
About the author
Arcia Tecun (a.k.a. Daniel Hernandez) is Wīnak (urban diasporic Mayan from the United States), married to a Pākehā raised in Kirikiriroa, a father to four tamariki, a storyteller (filmmaker, podcaster), and currently a pouako (lecturer) at Waipapa Taumata Rau (University of Auckland) in ethnomusicology and social-cultural anthropology. He will take on a role as co-director of the Tracy Aviary’s Jordan River Nature Center on Turtle Island later this year. His research and teaching interests include indigeneity, race, class, gender, religion, food and popular culture/music in Oceania and the Americas.
Lana Lopesi is an author, art critic, editor and multidisciplinary researcher from Tāmaki Makaurau. She is currently Assistant Professor Pacific Islander Studies in the Department of Indigenous, Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon. Since 2012 Lana has published extensively on New Zealand art and culture in local and international publications. Lana published her first book, False Divides (BWB Texts), in 2018, followed by Bloody Woman (Bridget Williams Books) in 2021. Her co-edited volumes include Transits and Returns (Vancouver Art Gallery; Institute of Modern Art) and Pacific Spaces: Translations and Transmutations (Berghahn Books).
Anisha Sankar is a Chennai-born, Te Awakairangi-raised, South Indian Tamil, who studies and writes about the contradictions of colonial capitalism. Her work has been published in Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy, Counterfutures: Left Thought and Practice Aotearoa, Overland and The Pantograph Punch. Her master’s thesis, ‘Notes on Fanon’s Dialectics’, an exploration of the dialectical method of Martiniquan revolutionary Frantz Fanon, won the Roger Oppenheim Memorial Prize in Sociology and Criminology in 2018. She is currently pursuing a PhD in social and political thought at York University, in Toronto, Canada.
