Western Expansionism via Subject-Dispersing Technologies

Abstract Lived relationships with the past together with active practices of memorialization and remembering pervade the values of Te Ao Māori (Māori World). As Te Awekotuku teaches us with the example of traditional tattoo practices for the kiri tuhi (body) and tā moko (face), for Māori “wearing ink” is about memory, as it “claims dominion and understanding across generations, across time, across space. Across lives.” As visual representations of life, life journey, kinship, and death, moko has been described as a “technology of memory” and taonga tuku iho (a gift from the ancestors). From a technological standpoint, Indigenous scholars reinforce the distinctive and innovative “use of technologies and engineering principles that transcended contemporaneous European technology” that was a strong feature of pre-encounter Māori culture. Māori innovations in science, technology, and forms of expression possess mātauranga (knowledge), ahua (appearance), and tukanga (process) that are applied to understanding processes of life and death. This article considers how the subsequent “appropriation of non-Indigenous technologies” such as social media agitates the interface between the worlds of Te Ao Māori and Te Ao Whānui (the global context). It does this by considering how digitally located post-selves pose a threat to tikanga (customs and beliefs) and, as some argue, “rangatiratanga [self-determination] of the physical body and thoughts after death.”