Life on the margin stifles creativity

By JULIE THOMPSON*

While drinking a chai latte in the urban think-tank that is a High St cafe, I found myself drawn to the Herald articles discussing the brave new world of entrepreneurial cities - and Professor Richard Florida's creativity index that suggests gay and immigrant populations boost long-term economic prosperity.

I found myself transported to some post-modern art installation/reality TV show where I was the new face of Auckland. No, truly. Here I am in my Karen Walker T-shirt and white Birkenstocks, writing a PhD thesis on Pacific culture in New Zealand, with my girlfriend and set of friends who are artists/poets/student activists drawn into Government services or designers sold out to "industry".

Here I am, a mid-20s, socially aware, lesbian, second-generation Pacific migrant. Not to mention that I write fiction and watch independent films in my spare time.

How is it, then, that while fulfilling the criteria for a thriving city filled with innovation and creative pizzazz, I often find myself pigeonholed as the token Pacific person or lesbian before the powers-that-be turn back to the sports channel?

Or, more accurately, how do we hold these contradictory images in balance?

On one hand, minority groups can offer a developing city some uniquely powerful perspectives. On the other, some very real institutional and social constraints often shape the lives of minority groups in New Zealand.

That is, in trying to place Auckland according to Professor Florida's creative city quiz, you might have decided that our city has actually all of the above, with gays and immigrants as prominent leaders, found in certain neighbourhoods, and trying to blend haplessly with Team New Zealand paraphernalia.

Professor Florida's assertion that gay people choose less conservative and more free-thinking living spaces does not surprise me. Nor does the idea that these spaces nourish creativity and innovation.

It makes sense that we would choose less judgmental areas to live, and that these spaces pose challenges to the status quo.

Decades of gay and black writers have found beauty and promise built out of the common adversity of their lives. The hardships that deeply move us often create the impetus for change, the revisioning of our futures.

I particularly think of the way the injustice of the dawn raids against Pacific migrants has moulded a dynamic and vital hip-hop industry. But in the clear view of this past, are we really meant to want to turn around and choose some nation-building project? Furthermore, it is precisely our uniqueness and irreverence to majority culture that allows us to think and build outside the square.

I cringe a bit at the blanket term "gay", which might mean those conservative middle-class gay couples trying to create "same-as-straight" lives filled with normative values and morals.

Rather, the term "queer" implies all sorts of so-called social deviants: single women, interracial couples of whatever sexuality, transgender people, and same-sex couples uninterested in the norms of a bigoted majority. These people are far more likely to develop new ideas and ways of being that provoke ingenuity and change.

It is most useful to think about Professor Florida's ideas in relation to a paradoxical and taut envisioning of public space: that the spaces available for innovative thought and creative possibilities might be the same spaces that also impede us with inequalities and silencing.

Indeed, American theorist Michael Warner claims that "urban space is always host space". The property owners and multinationals that command much of the physical trade within spaces such as that infamous Karangahape Rd/Ponsonby Rd junction, are not the same crowd that fills its footpaths and cafes.

The new thinkers rent or occupy urban spaces they could not possibly command or own. But in doing so, they leave the indelible mark of their presence, like French philosopher de Certeau's notion that the tactics of consumers are distinct from the dominant economic order.

These thinkers are not the same in-crowd talked about in banal discussions of the pink dollar. They are more like the thought-provoking graffiti scrawl of some poignant message on a corporate building and are much harder for the Government or corporate industries to woo.

Often brilliant new designs and systems grow out of the interweaving of the traditional and the new. Queer people and migrant groups bring together the sheer differences of our lives, the minute knowledges, and the communal resonances that create a mass of new possibilities.

The question becomes one of how do you sustain young radical thinkers - the artistic and politically knowledgeable migrants/queers/indigenous people whose fusion of ideas and ability leads the way into a more colourful future?

These communities are shaped so much by economic hardship, the struggle for survival, and combating the daily minor exclusions and discriminations that, while lateral and creative thought is both possible and probable, it becomes hard not to burn out, both personally and collectively.

These communities need to achieve institutional equalities, and gain economic and social resources to educate, retaliate and create.

While on this wave, there are some things that subject even the most queer, radical or creative types to disabling tension headaches or mental blocks.

First, anyone who thinks the Treaty of Waitangi is just a historical document could easily stagnate the most basic futuristic discussion.

Second, any radio station that thinks the word "lesbian" is a titillating and humorous word made up for straight people might induce creative dysfunction in even the most patient gay people.

Third, any social services that find the term "Pacific people" an accurate description for a homogeneous group have a blatantly mind-numbing effect.

I hope that everyone has an exhilarating knowledge wave, whenever and wherever they find it.

* Julie Thompson is completing a doctoral thesis in sociology at Auckland University.

Herald Special Report - February 18, 2003:
Knowledge Wave 2003 - the leadership forum

Herald feature: