The Settler Baggage of Abstraction
The Settler Baggage of Abstraction

Summary/Abstract: In this article, I describe one of the basal motifs of the Pākehā world in terms of its difference from the patternings of te Ao Māori. The motif is both a patterning traced by a mode of life and an epistemological diagram of the structures of thought that are co-constituted in that pattern. I read the Pākehā world from the perspective of its difference from Te Ao Māori, using Karl Marx, Alfred Sohn-Rethel and Gilbert Simondon as native informants of the European mode of life and questioning them about their difference from the perspective of a world primarily patterned on whakapapa. I argue that monetary exchange expresses the fundamental configuration of Pākehā life and thought, and I detail the hostility and incompatibility of this organisation of existence to that of te Ao Māori.

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