One of the basic arguments of the Subaltern Studies project draws attention to the (im)possibilities of dialogue. There always has to be the acknowledgment that the fundamental essence of dialogue is brought into question by the project. Dialogue therefore is both contingent and fragmented, always open to re-interpretation. And also, it is precisely at this moment of dialogic intersections that the culture-centered approach outlines the relevance of engaging with the dominant structures, of challenging them, or bringing them to question, and of continually finding avenues for structural transformation. The politics of representation that must participate in aggregation in order to bring material change is itself situated amidst fragmented interpretations and dialectical tensions.
The Haka, the Hurt, and the Work We Owe An Indian in Aotearoa reflects on resistance, complicity, and the solidarities we have yet to build Mohan Jyoti Dutta I watched the haka. I watched it several times, in fact. Each time, I tried to sit with what I was feeling before reaching for what I was supposed to think. Let me be honest about who I am in this conversation, because that matters. I am an upper caste, upwardly mobile Indian man. I am a professor at a university in Aotearoa. I carry the accumulated privileges of Brahminical socialisation, of English-medium education, of institutional access that was never designed for the communities I now write about and alongside. I say this not as confession but as orientation — because where you stand shapes what you see, and I have learned, through years of working with communities at the margins, that the refusal to name your own location is itself a colonial habit. The haka directed at Parmjeet Parmar did not offend me. It ...