Reconciliation and Plasticity in a Postcolonial Hawai‘i

Abstract

This article asks what might hold together the promises of a future open to indigenous organization and self-governance in postcolonial Hawai‘i. In what ways can past violence and lingering structural inequalities be integrated into contemporary politics and law? I argue that the grand projects of recognition and apology fail to resolve historical violence in forms acceptable to many native Hawaiians because of the constraints of the legal form in both alternatives, a legality that has served as a tool of colonization and subordination. Rather than turn away from the legal form, however, I explore a third philosophical alternative, plasticity, that comprehends the ways in which form destabilizes and reintegrates itself, grasping what Catherine Malabou has called “the interplay between form and itself.” I explore plasticity philosophically and in the context of ongoing plastic political experiments designed to privilege indigenous ontology as a means of reengaging with a different postcolonial legality.