Imagologia e identità in Aotearoa-New Zealand

Imagology and Identity in Aotearoa-New Zealand. - This work takes as a starting point the recent epistemological outcomes of imagology. This comparative literature’s branch deals with the demistification of preconceived images about “us” and “the others” and with the disclosure of their ethic and political meaning. Even tough imagology’s preferential field is the literary text, its heuristic value stands also for other textual forms such as historiography (taken as meta-historical fiction) or territoriality considered as a narrative construction. The paper follows the diachronic development of New Zealand identity, in the light of the mutual imagologic definitions expressed by maori and pakeha. The analysis focuses on the major post-colonial issues: the persistence of ideological patterns, heritage of the “Britain of the South” phase; the quest for pakeha identity in the post-colonial stage; the emergence of subaltern identities through the so-called Maori Renaissance. This process culminates in the institutionalization of bi-culturalism, whose imagologic features are, once again, questioned by immigration from Asia and South Pacific.