Conflicting autonomist and independentist logics in french polynesia

International audienceThe election of independentist Oscar Temaru as President of French Polynesia in March 2005 put an end to more than six months of political upheavals. Starting from the institutional impasse that appeared during this crisis, the aim of this article is to explain the deep division, which has become entrenched into French Polynesia's political field, between Autonomists and Independentists. I will first show how what differentiates them in spite of their common nationalist rhetoric crystallized in the conflict between rival appellations: “Polynesia(n)” and “Ma'ohi”. This opposition reveals the underlying cleavage between those who support a multiethnic view of citizenship and those who advocate the construction of a Ma'ohi Nation-state. Building on Bourdieu's work on identity struggles, I will consider how the notion of the “overturning of the stigma” applies to the autonomist logic. Not only does their argumentation in favour of a “Polynesian citizenship” rest on the particularistic measures of the colonial period, but the making of a plural society by the French colonial administration has been used by the Autonomists to ground their demands for a specific citizenship within the French Republic, as well as to deny the Independentists' claim for a separate Ma'ohi nationality. Bourdieu's alternative between the resigned acceptance of the “dominant definition of identity” and the “revolt against the stigma” applies to the autonomist logic, but in the case of the Independentists' struggle, it is challenged by what appears as the conquest of a new identity. Although in the present context, characterized by a general rejection of French rule, there is some degree of convergence between the two, this distinction will foster a better comprehension of the differences between two options that are too often thought to be interchangeable