Candace Fujikane
Univ of Hawaii, English, Faculty Memberedit
- In my work, I use a cultural studies approach to unmap th... moreIn my work, I use a cultural studies approach to unmap the multiply layered narratives through which land in Hawai‘i is represented. I examine the settler colonial implications of these mappings as well as the ways that Kanaka ‘Ōiwi oral maps and contemporary anticolonial mapping projects make visible the fragile fictions of the settler state. I attend to the problematic assumptions of mapmaking as well as imaginative ways of charting political transformation. In examining the geographical, literary and thematic maps that show us how the land is wrapped in relations of power, I foreground the materiality of land and the people it sustains, both often obscured on maps.
My writing and research engage synchronic sets of practices: those that challenge the operations of the U.S. settler state and Asian settler colonialism, and those that enact a future beyond the settler state. Praxis is a critical part of my research, and I am actively involved in land struggles against urban development of Kanaka ‘Ōiwi sacred sites and agricultural lands in Lualualei Valley, as well as in places where people live their vision of an independent and sustainable Hawai‘i.
I have recently co-edited with Jonathan Okamura Asian Settler Colonialism: From Local Governance to the Habits of Everyday Life in Hawai‘i (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008).
In this collection of essays, Native Hawaiian and settler contributors examine Asian settler colonialism as a constellation of the colonial ideologies and practices of Asian Americans as settlers who currently support the broader structure of the U.S. settler state. Premised on a critical distinction between Hawaiians, who have a genealogical connection to land in Hawai‘i, and non-Hawaiians, who are settlers whose genealogical ties lie elsewhere, the contributors examine Asian settler colonialism in essays ranging from analyses of Japanese, Korean, and Filipino settlement to accounts of Asian settler practices in the legislature, the prison industrial complex, and the U.S. military to critiques of Asian settlers’ representations of Hawai‘i in literature and the visual arts.
I am currently working on my book manuscript, Maps of Evidence: Anticolonial Mapping and the Fragile Fictions of the Settler State, which articulates a practice of anticolonial mapping as one that provides evidence of the ways that the settler state never completely captures the occupied territory, making possible the enactment of a future beyond the settler state.
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“Il colonialismo stanziale degli asiatici alle Hawai'i e il ruolo dei nazionalismi anticoloniali nativi negli Asian American Studies.” Trans. of “Asian Settler Colonialism in Hawai‘i: Foregrounding Anticolonial Native Nationalisms in Asian American Studies.” Trans. by Incoronata Inserra and Donatella Izzo. Hawai‘i al di là del mito. Eds. Incoronata Inserra and Donatella Izzo. A special issue of Ácoma 29-30 (Spring-Fall 2004), 121-133. more
“Sweeping Racism under the Rug of ‘Censorship’: The Controversy over Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Blu’s Hanging.” Whose Vision? Asian Settler Colonialism in Hawai‘i. Eds. Candace Fujikane and Jonathan Okamura. Spec. issue of Amerasia Journal 26:2 (2000): 158-194. Reprinted in The Japanese American Contemporary Experience in Hawai‘i. Ed. Jonathan Okamura. Spec. issue of Social Process in Hawai‘i 41 (2002). Reprinted in Major Problems in Asian American History. Eds. Lon Kurashige and Alice Yang Murray. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co, 2003.more
“Reimagining Development and the Local in Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre.” Women in Hawai‘i: Sites, Identities, and Voices.” Eds. Joyce N. Chinen, Kathleen O. Kane and Ida M. Yoshinaga. Spec. issue of Social Process in Hawai‘i 38 (1997): 1-177. Reprinted in American Poets and Politics. Spec. issue of Anglistica 2:1 (1998): 125-155. more
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