“Aloha Spirit” and the Cultural Politics - Keiko Ohnuma

dialogue • ohnuma 387
Conclusion
Lest my analysis come across as being altogether too negative, I would
point out that an ideology of love is preferable to what we see ascendant
in America today, an ideology of fear. Aloha spirit has survived dilutions
of meaning precisely because it has worked—to sell Hawai‘i and
its people as a destination while preventing interracial confl ict, incendiary
nationalisms, or violent uprising against tyrannical state control. The
discourse of aloha manages to discourage dissent partly because it also
restrains expressions of hegemony, requiring that they take the form of
“soft chains.” People raised in Hawai‘i freely profess such Local sentiments
as “Lucky you live Hawaii” or “Maui no ka oi” (Maui—it’s the
best); it is newcomers who are prone to express discomfort or rage at the
discourse of power smoothed over by such slogans. One reason for this is
an instinctive understanding among people who have made Hawai‘i their
home—especially those for whom there can be no other—that all groups
must coexist on an island, real or metaphorical. In fact, there is some evidence
that close-knit communities previously acknowledged what Teresa
Brennan called the “transmission of affect”—the idea that angry feelings
or beliefs could endanger the well-being of all (2004, 117); Kanahele also
concluded as much from his research into the origins of aloha in ancient
sayings (1986, 474).
Moreover, despite continual attempts by reactionary or opportunistic
factions to exploit aloha, the trope still is held in high esteem worldwide,
which opens a space for creative rewriting. I would echo Berlant in saying
that the reason for critiquing affi rmative emotions such as compassion
or empathy is not to invalidate them but to see how forms of “progress”
can at the same time be destructive, supporting social antagonism, for
instance, by “enforcing normative projects of orderliness or truth” (2004,
5). Instead of the “fantastical optimism central to the sentimental narrative,”
Berlant suggested a “sentimental radicalism” that speaks the “powerful
language of rageful truth-telling” (quoted in Woodward 2004, 72).
Similarly, Ahmed, citing Kaja Silverman, drew a distinction between love
and idealization, as the latter restricts the ideal to certain subjects (2004,
140).
In the case of aloha, I would further distinguish between prescriptive
and descriptive deployments. As a value assigned by others and that