Mystical Materialism: Unreason and Robert Sullivan’s Star Waka as Navigation for Postmodernity
Location
PANEL: Mellon Mays Undergraduate Senior Fellows Part I
Mudd 113
Moderator: Kathryn Metz
Document Type
Presentation - Open Access
Start Date
4-25-2025 11:00 AM
End Date
4-25-2025 12:00 PM
Abstract
Against the portrayal of city lights as emblematic of modernity and progress, Robert Sullivan’s poetry book Star Waka portrays a star-absent sky as metaphor for the crisis for our time. Sullivan does not use Māori cosmology strictly within the frame of western rationalism nor its opposite, but instead falls more precisely within a third term, unreason, naming the alternate forms of rationality within “pre-colonial” thought. In this presentation, I propose that in providing an alternate frame for reason, Sullivan is able to challenge the legitimacy of capitalist economic rationalism. Following Gramsci, economic rationalism treats its assessment of materiality with a god-like reverence, giving an unchallengeable legitimacy to the supposedly solely material basis of the reasoning behind structural adjustment programs and other neoliberal policies. Staring in the face of its violent birth within a colonial world, Sullivan’s epistemology is not purely of a precolonial Māori origin, nor does it claim to engage the “purely material” world. Instead, I argue that the clearly cultural or religious basis of his work makes Star Waka an even more crucial navigation guide for the present globalizing and postmodern moment, contesting rather than ceding to the mystical grounds of modern capitalist economic materialism and rationalism.
Keywords:
Poetry/literature criticism, Critical theory, Indigenous studies, Postcolonial theory
Recommended Citation
Lee, Aliyah, "Mystical Materialism: Unreason and Robert Sullivan’s Star Waka as Navigation for Postmodernity" (2025). Research Symposium. 7.
https://digitalcommons.oberlin.edu/researchsymp/2025/presentations/7
Major
Africana Studies
Award
Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship
Project Mentor(s)
Charles Peterson, Africana Studies
2025
Mystical Materialism: Unreason and Robert Sullivan’s Star Waka as Navigation for Postmodernity
PANEL: Mellon Mays Undergraduate Senior Fellows Part I
Mudd 113
Moderator: Kathryn Metz
Against the portrayal of city lights as emblematic of modernity and progress, Robert Sullivan’s poetry book Star Waka portrays a star-absent sky as metaphor for the crisis for our time. Sullivan does not use Māori cosmology strictly within the frame of western rationalism nor its opposite, but instead falls more precisely within a third term, unreason, naming the alternate forms of rationality within “pre-colonial” thought. In this presentation, I propose that in providing an alternate frame for reason, Sullivan is able to challenge the legitimacy of capitalist economic rationalism. Following Gramsci, economic rationalism treats its assessment of materiality with a god-like reverence, giving an unchallengeable legitimacy to the supposedly solely material basis of the reasoning behind structural adjustment programs and other neoliberal policies. Staring in the face of its violent birth within a colonial world, Sullivan’s epistemology is not purely of a precolonial Māori origin, nor does it claim to engage the “purely material” world. Instead, I argue that the clearly cultural or religious basis of his work makes Star Waka an even more crucial navigation guide for the present globalizing and postmodern moment, contesting rather than ceding to the mystical grounds of modern capitalist economic materialism and rationalism.
