Nothing Outside of the Text in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

One of the longer-term effects of poststructuralism and its principles, in particular deconstruction, has been to direct fresh attention to reading as an ethical practice. A re-focus on the ethical responsibility of the reader is part of a large, historic process of moving beyond ‘structuralism’–a name for the formerly-dominant paradigm of the academic disciplines, which embedded false ideas based on sexism, racism, and scientism in the heart of philosophical theory. We will consider how ethics applies to reading in our local milieu; a nation founded on a bilateral relationship between British settlers and iwi Māori, which was inscribed in 1840 in a national treaty, the Treaty of Waitangi/Te Tiriti o Waitangi. We read everything we see around us as part of a system of meanings determined by local histories and cultures. What does it mean to be ‘read’ as a Māori, a Pacific, or a Pākehā/White person in the local educational contexts of university and school, and what are the implications of different (cultural) forms of reading in a complex community?.