Boundaries and Power in The Journey Home/Te Haerenga Kainga
Lauren Schellenberg,
University of Manitoba

In her book The Journey Home/Te Haerenga Kainga, Cathie Dunsford explores several issues that have created debate and contention within the feminist academic community. Her novel tells the story of the heroine, Cowrie, a native of Aotearoa New Zealand who travels to San Francisco, USA, for her studies. Her journey is filled with challenges that represent those that are stirring up a larger feminist community. This paper will examine, from a theoretical perspective, several of the issues looked at in Dunsford’s novel. We will look first at the concept of boundaries and the problematic idea of the monadic individual. We will explore the ways in which the characters in Dunsford’s book attempt to break down boundaries between self and others, as well as between various cultural and subcultural groups. The paper will then discuss different perspectives on power structures and how the dominant discourses are being resisted by Dunsford’s characters.

Cowrie, the principle character of The Journey Home, has recently discovered her Hawai’ian heritage. We find out in the first pages of the novel that Cowrie has just returned home to Aotearoa from a journey to Hawai’i to discover her roots. The author establishes her character’s embracing and accepting nature by having Cowrie describe both places as “home.”  Cowrie’s desire to recognize her ancestry in the context of a different cultural group earns her the fondly applied label “boundary breaker” (5).  We learn early on that Dunsford’s heroine represents the opposite of what has been termed, the “monadic” individual.

Kirby describes this individual as one who is “‘undivided’ within itself, and separate from other subjects and the external environment as a whole.”  This concept is an important aspect of the Western worldview and, as Kirby writes, is one that has played a major role in imperialism, industry and cartography.  It is this idea of the bounded individual, she claims, that has allowed European colonizers to tour and to map “unexplored” lands and exploit the resources and indigenous inhabitants for economic gain. The separation this perspective affords, from people of “other” ethnicities as well as from the land itself, was likely a “necessary belief”  for the explorers of the New World, as well as those that control commercial industries of today. It is particularly these sorts of psychic boundaries that Dunsford’s character Cowrie sets out to break.

Kirby’s article outlines the Freudian perspective of identity development that states that the self is created by the dividing line between oneself and the environment. Cowrie, however, actually bases her identity as Turtle Woman on a unique connection with one significant feature of her Pacific environment: the ocean. Dunsford frequently describes Cowrie in oceanic terms, writing that she “floats” and “swims” in her movements. In one scene with Cowrie’s lover Peta, Dunsford writes, “Cowrie’s body arches like a wave curling to break on the beach” (72). At the end of the scene, Cowrie tells Peta, “You are like fire in my ocean” (73). Later in the novel, Cowrie morphs into a turtle to rescue a little girl at sea. We read that “Her body expands to hold the intake of air and her fins scoop the water skilfully [sic], her shell balancing her as she skims beneath the waves” (157). We can see, then, that her character is very closely associated with both the sea and with turtle archetype. Thus, far from the monadic separation from one’s surroundings, Cowrie’s relationship with her world is very close and essential to her character.

Throughout the course of the novel, Cowrie also develops close relationships with people of other cultural heritages. During her stay in San Francisco where Cowrie is a foreigner, her connections with other people illustrate her defiance of the idea that geographical and cultural differences entail the building of boundaries. While the monadic worldview would erect, between the foreigner and the new land, a “constant barricade…preventing admixture or the diffusion of either entity,”  Cowrie’s character embraces her new environment and those in it. She makes herself at home in San Francisco, developing friendships with students and colleagues that cut across cultural boundaries. With her students at the University, Cowrie starts a storytelling group that allows each of them to share their ancestral stories. This sharing of their own particular cultural knowledges, in a way that lets them “feel it in their hearts as well as hear it in their heads” (145), melts boundaries that can form across differences in ethnicity, age, class, sexuality and background.

It is this type of boundary-breaking that Audre Lorde discusses in her article about redefining difference. Lorde’s argument is that it is the various distortions that are present in our beliefs about human differences that are problematic and especially harmful within movements that are intending to make a societal change. Feminism is one such movement wherein the differences among women act as boundaries within the marginalized group. Lorde writes of marginalized individuals who “identify one way in which we are different, and we assume that to be the cause of all oppression, forgetting other distortions around difference.”  We see an example of this disadvantageous perspective in Dunsford’s account of the first meeting between Cowrie and the character of DK. Here, we learn that DK is a young lesbian and a student of Gay and Lesbian Studies, that is, part of a marginalized group within the community. Despite this, DK herself demonstrates her own ignorance and marginalization of fat women when she tells Cowrie “you really oughta get more exercise” (44). DK’s oppressive belief that fat people are inferior illustrates the ways in which individuals are excluded or silenced, that is, marginalized further, based on other differences. 

It is Lorde’s claim that we need to examine these distortions and how we perpetuate this marginalization.  She acknowledges that in today’s world people encounter human differences in various social settings, daily, but claims that we need to establish patterns for relating across these differences. We can look to Cowrie’s storytelling group again here as an example of a new way of relating across boundaries. As we saw above, the group called Siliyi’ik unites people of different cultures and backgrounds through the sharing of stories and archetypes. As Dunsford writes, “…the Siliyi’ik performance was an astute way to get everyone discussing the issues, through talkstory, in their own tradition, allowing others a way in…” (281). It is the egalitarian process of talkstory, or storytelling, that melts boundaries and tears away at the barriers between the very different people in the group and audience.

In The Journey Home, the innovative approach that Siliyi’ik takes to communication and sharing knowledge also represents a resistance to the dominant conventions in academia. Cowrie’s desire to incorporate storytelling into the classroom is opposed by Rita and Marlene, characters that represent the University and the dominant discourse. They deem her new pedagogical strategy as inferior to traditional texts and methods of learning. In one scene we discover that Rita has foiled Cowrie and the students’ plan to have the texts changed from the conventional theoretical pieces to primary source literature. When talking about the students’ attempt to change the course curriculum, Rita says “I’m going to oppose it. That’s the end of story” (257). Marlene du Fresne, Cowrie’s soon-to-be academic advisor, who “believes indigenous cultures are primitive” (273), also forbids her to include oral literature in her course and thesis.  It is Cowrie’s role as a boundary breaker that fuels her attempt to tear down these exclusionary walls around this monadic institution. This opposition between the dominant, ruling force and the alternative resistance is explained in Sawicki’s article outlining the Foucauldian model of power.

As Sawicki writes, Foucault’s claim is that power is everywhere and can be “exercised at the everyday level of social relations.”  The type of oral stories that Cowrie is trying to introduce at the University, as a way of communicating across cultural and subcultural boundaries, operate at precisely this micro level of society. These stories, which come from sources outside the dominant discourse, are examples of “subjugated knowledges.”  As Sawicki quotes, these experiences are forms of knowledge that have been “disqualified” or marginalized and, according to Foucault, resistance would mean making them heard.  This, as we saw above, is Cowrie’s and Siliyi’ik’s intention.

Cowrie’s resistance to the dominant discourse can be further demonstrated in her resignation from the University institution. Having been forbidden to incorporate talkstory and indigenous sources into her classroom and PhD thesis, Cowrie decides to carry out her work in the form of a novel. Her last act of resistance to the dominating force of the academic world was to extract herself from the system. In a letter, she writes “Until there is such a system established which truly recognizes alternative methods of academic work, then I choose to complete my work elsewhere” (293-4). Her decision to write a novel is one that realizes Cowrie’s desire to communicate from an indigenous, primary perspective.

Erica Lawson discusses several examples of this type of resistance to dominant discourses, in her article Images in Black. She outlines several ways Black women challenge negative racial images. Here, she writes that while the media propagates several negative stereotypes of women of colour, these women are choosing to look outside this system for alternative ways of establishing their identities. One of Lawson’s interviewees states “I refuse to contribute my money to films, magazines, newspapers, et cetera, that I believe contribute to these racist, sexist images.”  Lawson claims that many black women look to “the importance of family, community, friends and partners in helping them to live holistically.”  We see that here, too, one way of resisting the status quo is to find alternatives to the dominant system. While Cowrie sought an alternative to academic work in deciding to write novels, African-Canadian women, according to Lawson, are refusing to buy into the negative images of their culture that abound in the media. 

We have seen, then, that the issues that are raised in Cathie Dunsford’s The Journey Home/Te Haerenga Kainga, are issues that permeate current feminist studies.  This paper has looked at several such issues in the novel and at some of the theoretical works that discuss them. We looked first at Kirby’s description of the monadic individual and how Cowrie’s own worldview is actually its opposite. We saw how Cowrie is a boundary-breaker, exemplified by her close relationship with her environment and by her desire to share cultural knowledge. We discussed Lorde’s suggestion to find new ways of relating across differences and saw that Siliyi’ik is an example of just this. We then looked at how this storytelling group was an act of resistance to the dominant discourse maintained by the University. The paper discussed the Foucauldian model of power and resistance and finally, we looked at Lawson’s examples of how women of colour challenge negative racial images. It is obvious, in reading both Dunsford’s novel as well as contemporary feminist theories of change, that these issues are immense and, as yet, unresolved. There is considerable work to be done in the field of feminist studies that must take into account these issues of boundaries and resistance to conventional ways of thinking.  As we become ever more aware of the ways in which dominant ideas and ways of relating effect us all, we can learn to challenge these discourses and establish new methods of negotiating, and appreciating, the vast array of human differences.