A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

in the two ‘Oiwi issues can be explained by reference to other indigenous agendas as
well:
Like most Native people, we don’t perceive the world of creative writing as
divided into categories of prose and poetry or fiction and non-fiction. Nor do we
imagine ourselves crossing from political resistance into artistic creation and then
back again. Life is a confluence of creativities: art is a fluid political medium, as
politics is metaphorical and artistic. 382
This resounds with Hereniko’s assessment of Pacific Island literature. Thus, a model like
Fanon’s different ‘stages’ of colonial and postcolonial literatures might be inappropriate
in the face of such a more holistic and integrative approach. In her dissertation on
competing nationalisms in Hawai’i, Candace Fujikane offers a different reason for the
collage-like appearance of native Hawaiian writings: “What has become a remarkable
literary form for Hawaiians, then, is the form of the anthology, which, by its economic
form and diversity, embodies the idea of an archipelagic nation formation.” 383 Writing
before the inception of ‘Oiwi, Fujikane mentions two earlier anthologies that are
assembled in this way, namely He Alo A He Alo (Face to Face): Hawaiian Voices on
Sovereignty (1993), and Hawai’i: Return to Nationhood (1994). An even earlier
ambitious project which aimed at exploring native Hawaiian identity is George
Kanahele’s 1986 book Ku Kanaka – Stand Tall: A Search for Hawaiian Values. Kanahele
“presents a careful, detailed exposition of the essential primal Hawaiian culture, from a
Nationalism: Report from the Hawaiian Front,” in boundary 2 21 No. 1 (1994): 111-33. Their disagreement
revolves around the historical constructedness of (native) culture and its politicization in (post)colonial
times. While the anthropologist Linnekin analyzes expressions of native culture in a framework of
expediency, Trask positions herself as “being Hawaiian in a full, holistic sense; she resists analysis. Thus,
she resists Linnekin’s attempt to identify and isolate political components in Hawaiian culture” (119).
Keesing, on the other hand, takes the liberty to label native traditions as genuine or spurious, a practice
which Linnekin criticizes. She states that: “authenticity is always contextualized, always defined in the
present” (120). Tobin complicates the discussion by arguing that for anthropologists, the “native point of
view” is always already “re-relegated to the status of informant – a voice to be interpreted” (124-5).
Moreover, Tobin notes that “Trask adamantly rejects the concept of ‘Hawaiian at heart.’ She denies that
those who are not born Hawaiian (genealogically) can become Hawaiian (sympathetically). But Linnekin
argues that membership in a Hawaiian community can be, and has been, extended to foreigners. For her,
culture is a matter of participation, not of birth” (122). These problems should be borne in mind when
approaching both native Hawaiian and Asian Local writings: Although the parameters of contestation are
different, both are informed by controversies about authenticity, literary value, exclusion, and the politics of
representation; I refer to the Woman Warrior controversy, the charges of ‘settler arrogance’ and Bamboo
Ridge’s alleged ‘neocolonialism,’ as well as to the discussion about Yamanaka’s writings (see chapter
5.2.5).
382 Trask in Franklin et al. 2000: 51-2.
383 Fujikane 1996: 220.
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