Postcolonial Māori Television? The dirty politics of indigenous cultural production

This article considers how Gayatri Spivak's notion of the new subaltern might shed light on the political significance of Indigenous television broadcaster, Māori Television. The article begins from the premise that television's populist roots and its ties to the rhythms of everyday life provide a great opportunity for thinking about a form of postcolonical critique generated ‘from below’. The article argues that the polysemic powers of Māori Television play a political role in shaping and disseminating emerging notions of Indigeneity and that the political implications of such polysemic powers are uncertain. Yet it is precisely this uncertainty that opens out orthodox notions of Indigenous political practice. Indigenous identities are ‘(re)constructed at multiple levels’ (global, state, community and individual) and they vary over time and place. As such, we need to devise multiple sites of critique and draw on as many different resources as we can, in order to develop supple and mobile frameworks for articulating the contemporary movements of social power and Indigenous struggles. Spivak's concept of the new subaltern is one tool, amongst many, that can contribute to such critical conversations.