Sporting mythscapes, neoliberal histories, and post-colonial amnesia inAotearoa/New Zealand

Abstract

Andrews (1999) has argued that under conditions of market-based liberalization, the sporting past has increasingly been put to use for the purposes of accumulation. This selectively rendered "sporting historicism," he argues, results in "a pseudo-authentic historical sensibility, as opposed to a genuinely historically grounded understanding of the past, or indeed the present by rendering history a vast, yet random, archive of events, styles, and icons" (2006). Under such conditions, power-laden and selective "mythscapes" emerge. In this paper, we carry Andrews' contention forward by arguing that critical sport scholars should further problematize the uses of the sporting mythscape-particularly by calling into question those re-historicizations that emerge in public discourse and excavating whose interests they serve. Here we interrogate the politics of how sporting pasts are mobilized in contemporary Aotearoa/New Zealand; in particular at the conjuncture of a globalized "free-market" economy and fluctuating (post-)colonial identity politics. We point to various cases that help reveal how specters of sporting pasts circulate within national mythologies in selective and politicized ways.

Reflexivity or orientation? Collective memories in the Australian, Canadian and New Zealand national press

“…Instead, newspaper discourses sought to draw on each nation’s shared imperial past as a way of orientating ‘the nation’ in both a transnational (Diamond Jubilee) and international (London Olympic Games) context. In this way, collective memories of the British Empire provided an interpretative matrix through which ‘selective renditions’ (Falcous and Newman, 2016) from each nation’s imperial past were rendered through a process of ‘memory conflict’ (Ryan, 2014) that could both assert or undermine ‘the nation’ (Rothwell, 2012). Such conflict was brought to light in the Australian press, whereupon the legacies of empire revealed a ‘disorientation’ towards the British monarchy and the problems in electing their own ‘national’ head of state (Southphommasane, 2012).…”

“…Accordingly, whereas ‘different countries and nations with distinct historical thinking and understanding will make different historical value judgments’ (Pei, 2009: 32), assessing how each nation views the past can help to elaborate on the extent to which processes of cosmopolitanism are marked by a sense of national reflexivity (Levy and Sznaider, 2002). Here, former colonial states present a pertinent opportunity to examine the relationship between the nation, globalisation and the discursive employment of particular collective memories (Falcous and Newman, 2016; Levy and Sznaider, 2002). Although interpretations of Australia, Canada and New Zealand’s ‘imperial’ past offer ‘no simple reading’ (Sreberny-Mohammadi, 1991), it is a reading drawn from their location within a global history of (British) imperialism.…”

“…However, although national codes are frequently used to construct the nation in newspaper coverage (Maguire, 1999; Maguire and Poulton, 1999; Vincent et al, 2010) and whereas cultural attributes can, particularly in the case of former colonial states, be ‘deployed as a [neo] colonial technique’ (Falcous and Newman, 2016: 66), such techniques could also highlight latent contradictions. In his study of promotional media for the 2005 ‘Lions Tour’, 6 held in New Zealand, Falcous (2007) noted how advertisements presented a ‘revision of the World War II service of New Zealanders to the then-fading British Empire’ (p. 385).…”

“…Commending the significance of New Zealand’s imperial heritage, particularly with regard to its involvement in the scaling of Mount Everest and its part in aiding the British forces during the Second World War, Rothwell’s (2012) comments reveal how ‘liturgized’ moments from New Zealand’s imperial past were subsequently repositioned alongside New Zealand national identity (Falcous and Newman, 2016: 68).…”

National Bodies: Political Ontology, Cultural Citizenship, and Migrant Rugby

“…One cultural practice through which dominant frames of citizenship are confirmed and resisted is rugby union, what many consider to be Aotearoa/New Zealand's national sport and quasi religious past-time (Phillips, 1996). Rugby is used to mobilize a particular White-male dominated, colonized, frontier-based imagination, and racially anxious image of national identity (Falcous, 2007;Falcous & Newman, 2016;Falcous & West, 2009;Gibbons, 2002;Grainger, Falcous, & Newman, 2012). However, the reality of rugby is also contradictory to many of these claims (Hokowhitu & Scherer, 2008;Ryan, 2001).…”