Does Marshallese studies exist? Towards the uncomfortable institutionalization of difference

Abstract

In the fall of 2009, the College of the Marshall Islands announced the development of a new Marshallese Studies program, one whose only requirements were that it fit within the institution’s academic template and did not challenge accreditation standards. This paper asks the question of whether such an endeavor is possible, framed by an ethics of difference and paralogy theorized through a decolonizing lens. Here I am concerned with the effects of trying to create an area studies program that is disciplined within institutional assumptions of objectivity, truth, and a politics of neutrality, while simultaneously attempting to privilege the production of local Marshallese knowledges as legitimate in a colonial structure that forecloses on such spaces of political, ethical, and epistemological alterity. I consider a trio of problematic initiatives that fell short of legitimizing indigenous knowledges, as well as the difficulty and necessity of forcing the issue of institutional contingency through the privileging of Marshallese language.