Progressive spaces of neoliberalism in Aotearoa: A genealogy and critique

In this article, we will argue that any investigation of the ‘progressive spaces of neoliberalism’ needs to maintain a critical stance on the neoliberal project. In particular, we suggest that it is important to see the ways ‘progressive spaces of neoliberalism’ are troubled by discourses of colonisation which in turn are themselves disrupted by genealogies of Indigenous struggles. Spaces of neoliberalism are embedded in discourses of colonisation, as space is ultimately grounded in somewhere, in a ‘place’. In Aotearoa, the discourses of colonisation and place are in turn entangled with a genealogy of Maori struggles to maintain and create political, economic and social structures and frameworks. These struggles are also productive, and have the potential to encourage, diverse political economies of production, trade and enterprise distinct from neoliberalism, its progressive spaces, and colonisation. We will investigate two cases to highlight that the ‘messy actualities’ of neoliberalism cannot be extracted from the genealogy of colonisation. Any attempts to start an analysis of progressive space as located in a neutral ‘now and here’ are therefore problematic.