The Establishment of a multi-cultural national identity as resultant of violence and bodily suffering in Keri Hulme's The Bone People

Abstract

This research on Keri Hulme's The Bone People attempts to unfold how the narrativization of violence and suffering that results into the eventual establishment of a harmonious, multi-cultural nationalist discourse. The analysis of suffering and regenerative desires of the three central characters: Simon, Kerewin and Joe unmask a more constructive political activism thereby leading to establish a new, dynamic post-imperial nationalist concern. It is significant through the reconciliation which ostensibly unites Kerewin, Joe and Simon as the heart, muscles and mind of a new post-imperial body. Kerewin, Joe and Simon represent three bodies in one; a pseudo-family unit of terrestrial trinity which avoids biologically essentialist modes of national and historical continuity. This national ethos is not based on binary opposition between Pakeha and Maori but based on discourse that devoids any hierarchies in the name of class, race and gender. Here, violence is central to Hulme's vision, an idea that redeems a nation from binary opposition in term of class and race.