ABSTRACT
Patricia Grace’s novel Baby No-Eyes (1998), the main focus of discussion in this chapter, was inspired by a controversial incident involving the mutilation of a miscarried Maori child in a New Zealand hospital. As is the case with Ihimaera’s representation of the 1918 influenza pandemic in The Dream Swimmer, Grace interprets the incident as an index of various forms of cultural desecration and appropriation which have followed European colonial incursion into Aotearoa New Zealand. Like Ihimaera, Grace also investigates various forms of Maori resistance to Pakeha cultural and political hegemony, but she engages more specifically with the way in which resistance may be mounted through the manipulation of language itself as a constitutive mode of representation. This chapter investigates the way in which Grace challenges Pakeha cultural and linguistic hegemony by invoking Maori mythological narratives and attitudes to artistic construction, and by using Maori grammatical patterns in order to disrupt the univocal authority of the English language.
