Disruptions, Decolonial Desire and Diaspora: A Provocation toward a Pacific Queer Worldmaking Scholarly Practice in Aotearoa–New Zealand

Abstract

Pacific queer scholarship is underrepresented within Pacific research communities in Aotearoa–New Zealand. What does exist is either hypervisible or centres on narratives of oppression, both of which are archetypes that can deny the complexity of Pacific queer communities. As two queer Samoan scholars raised in the Aotearoa–New Zealand diasporic setting, we offer a provocation that tests the opportunities (and limits) queer theoretics provide for Pacific research. Through a combination of poetry, vignettes, and theory (queer and straight), as well as reflections, we intentionally and generatively transgress heteronormative, exclusionary and static boundaries that still exists within Pacific research in New Zealand.