Graduate Student, Program in American Culture
Thesis Title: We're All Hawaiians Now: Kanaka Maoli Performance and the Politics of Aloha
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Vicente Diaz
Amy Stillman Sarita See Andrea Smith Evelyn Alsultany |
About
I teach and write about contemporary indigenous performance in the Pacific and Native North America. My Ph.D. is from the Program in American Culture at the University of Michigan with an emphasis in Native Pacific Cultural Studies and Performance Studies.
My research explores how Hawaiian indigeneity is performative and the ways that indigeneity itself is performed into existence.
Weaving together Marxist, post-colonial, and performance theory, my dissertation theorizes why Native Hawaiians still perform aloha despite its commodification and often detrimental effects. I contend that is through aloha’s constant performance that Native Hawaiians have been able to survive culturally, even if the performance of aloha contradicts their material realities.
Through the exploration of the work of two contemporary Native Hawaiian performers—Krystilez, a rapper from a rural Hawaiian Homestead and Cocoa Chandelier, a drag queen performing in urban Honolulu—I provide a critique of neoliberal knowledge production and the desire to identify the “truth” or “essence” of Native Hawaiians. The representational strategies of these performers illuminate the political stakes of Native Hawaiian Federal Recognition, Native cultural politics and US multiculturalism, the latter which is at the heart of any invocation of “the spirit of aloha.”
Contact Information
| Address: | 505 S. State Street |
