Blog 5 - Tze Ming Mok

Tze Ming Mok, “Race You There”, Landfall 208, Dunedin: Otago University Press, November 2004, pp18-26

Who is Tze Ming Mok?

Tze Ming Mok is a London-based New Zealand Chinese writer. She writes fiction, poetry, criticism, journalism and political editorials for various publishers in New Zealand, Australia and Asia. From 2005 to 2007 she wrote in the New Zealand liberal web-blog Public Address.[1]

Ming Mok talks about how New Zealand views culture and relations, and suggests ways to make social change. She uses the term “race-blind neutrality” to suggest that there is a predominantly white political group asserting dominance while pretending not to. She conveys a view of whites forgetting that they themselves are immigrants and suggests a new unity be created by collectively recovering a coalition between immigrants (including Pakeha immigrants) and the Tangatawhenua.

How do Westerners view culture?

Ming Mok’s suggestion of “race-blind neutrality”[2] in New Zealand links with James Clifford’s discussion in “On Collecting art and culture”.[3] The western museum has been said to create passivity in the way that westerners view culture. In western history collections of cultural objects expressed a possessive western culture who viewed identity as a kind of wealth. [4]As Susan Stewart says, in the modern western museum “an illusion of a relation between things takes the place of a social relation.” [5]Change in depicted cultures was “not worth salvaging” as it would break in the perceived authenticity of the found or studied culture.[6] These ideas on the western museum seem to be a reflection of the way Pakeha New Zealand settlers have in Ming Mok’s view become passive participants in culture.

How can art and creativity create sites for social change?

Ming Mok calls for us to deepen connections with communities[7]. Natasha Meckman, who has worked with cultural communities within her various roles at Auckland Museum, uses American Museums as a model for the potential to turn the passive viewer into the active participant. She believes New Zealand museums would benefit from developing long-lasting partnerships with different communities and by extending the museum experience to outside the museum with festivals like Matariki. This intercultural activity enables a genuine exchange and an opportunity to learn about different cultures.[8]

As for “whites” thinking they are not immigrants? In an extract of Irish-descent Nigel Murphy’s poem “My New Zealand Identity”, he blatantly states his awareness of the injustices done to New Zealand Maori; “My heritage is central to the imperial and colonial project of fucking over Maori and creating New Zealand”.[9] I hope that it is this honesty, however shocking or challenging, combined with social changes within institutions like the museum, that may aid the further development of authentic understanding of cultures in New Zealand.





[1] Tze Ming Mok. Web. 14 Aug. 2009. .
[2] Tze Ming Mok, “Race You There”, Landfall 208 Dunedin: Otago Univeristy Press, 2004, pp,18-26;20
[3] James Clifford, “On Collecting Art and Culture”, in The Predicamentof Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988, pp.215-251;
[4] Ibid;p218
[5] Ibid;p220
[6] Ibid;p232
[7] Ming Mok;p23
[8] Beckman, Natasha. "Creativity, Ethnic Communities and the Curious Case of Museums." Aotearoa Ethnic Network Journal 1.2 (2006): 41-44. Aotearoa Ethnic Network. Web. 09 Aug. 2009. ;p43
[9] Murphy, Nigel. "My New Zealand Identity." Aotearoa Ethnic Network Journal 1.2 (2006): 15-17. Aotearoa Ethnic Network. Web. 9 Aug. 2009. .;p15