Introduction

Abstract

What is New Zealand, and where is New Zealand other than alone in the earth's watery hemisphere, immersed in the South Pacific, 2000 kilometres from anywhere including Australia? Like Australia, New Zealand was imagined long before it became a political entity. Co-constituted with the future Australia as part of Australasia, this settler community is an invention of two worlds, firstly Polynesia, followed 500 years later by the British world south of Asia, which grew from a beachhead at Sydney. What was the experience of modernity and modernism at the edge, by voyagers to this thinly populated archipelago, the last major landmass occupied by humans? We ask these questions in exchange with our trans-Tasman friends and neighbours at Thesis Eleven, with whom we share the region which our authors call 'Australasia', and which we call the 'Tasman world' (Mein Smith and Hempenstall, 2008). This issue is designed, however, to demonstrate the distinct perspectives on the 'antipodean condition' (Pocock, 2005: 6) which New Zealanders possess.To think in terms of traffic with neighbours across the Tasman Sea offers one way to overcome the limits that national narratives impose on how communities view their worlds, or see themselves in relation to others. Being antipodean serves as a reminder of how national identity and global outreach are interdependent. Yet, in foregrounding links and shared histories in the southern ocean, we cannot dismiss the identity stories that communities create for themselves. New Zealanders, however connected they are culturally to Australia by a long history of traffic, are differently positioned from Australians within world systems as well as within their separate, recent, national myths and storylines. Both New Zealand and Australia belong to a complex of histories south of Asia. But New Zealand's relationship to Asia assumes a different shape because of its geographical position. Both New Zealand and Australia share much culturally with the United States, yet New Zealand has a differently configured historical relationship with that country. New Zealand

Reframing Majoritarian National Identities Within an Antipodean Perspective

“…Thesis Eleven has made a major contribution to the ongoing conversation about how we should explore the 'antipodean condition' (Pocock, 2005) within what the editors of a recent issue on this topic call the 'Tasman world' (Mein Smith and Hempenstall, 2008a). That world has its own distinctive mix of time, place and alterity neatly evoked in Peter Beilharz's words as being 'always ever both European and other' (Beilharz, 1998: viii).…”

A meeting of minds: Peter Beilharz, public intellectual and friend

“…Continuing his role as Thought Partner, Peter B next invited Peter H and me to guest edit a special issue of Thesis Eleven on the broad theme of ‘empires, islands and beaches’. Peter H and I were so busy completing our book Remaking the Tasman World (Mein Smith et al, 2008) that we only wrote the introduction rather than contributing articles of our own (Mein Smith and Hempenstall, 2008). Instead, we commissioned essays from the new and emerging researchers we mentored at the 2006 workshop, and added pieces solicited from colleagues engaged with our Anzac Neighbours project and NZAC Research Centre.…”

“…While the settler colony of New Zealand was co-constituted with the Australian settler colonies from 1840, through annexation to the British empire, we argued that New Zealand’s settler community was an invention of two worlds, first Polynesia, in the European Middle Ages, followed 500 years later by the British World south of Asia, which grew from the convict port built at Sydney. The Beilharz influence is evident in sentences such as: ‘To think in terms of traffic with neighbours across the Tasman Sea offers one way to overcome the limits that national narratives impose on how communities view their worlds, or see themselves in relation to others’ (Mein Smith and Hempenstall, 2008: 5). A major point of difference from Peter B’s argument, however, was that of race: that Aotearoa New Zealand’s ‘Polynesian communities shape national identity and transnational worlds in ways that are different from Pacific Island and Indigenous Aboriginal influences on Australia’ (Mein Smith and Hempenstall, 2008: 6).…”

“…The Beilharz influence is evident in sentences such as: ‘To think in terms of traffic with neighbours across the Tasman Sea offers one way to overcome the limits that national narratives impose on how communities view their worlds, or see themselves in relation to others’ (Mein Smith and Hempenstall, 2008: 5). A major point of difference from Peter B’s argument, however, was that of race: that Aotearoa New Zealand’s ‘Polynesian communities shape national identity and transnational worlds in ways that are different from Pacific Island and Indigenous Aboriginal influences on Australia’ (Mein Smith and Hempenstall, 2008: 6).…”

“…According to Greenwich Mean Time, when it is 7 a.m. in London, clocks in Christchurch said 7 p.m. Settler colonial New Zealand started out as Britain’s Antipodes, at the farthest edge of the modern world. But for its Pacific Island and Asian communities, their Antipodes ‘constitute very different worlds’ (Mein Smith and Hempenstall, 2008: 6).…”