A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

form and the resulting disjunction has created a new cultural region – what Lee
identifies as ‘colonial space.’ 88
These observations of a city poet mirror the dilemma faced by writers in postcolonial
contexts. Place, history, and language have to be interrogated and (re-)claimed in order to
turn the colonial into a postcolonial space. To reinscribe a place as home, as the locus of
identity, a rigorously regional language has to be developed or utilized. Accordingly,
Marjorie Pryse sees regionalist writing as a socialization of our reading practices, for
readers often find themselves in uncertain territory, encountering characters who
do not even speak in ‘standard’ or literary English – or Spanish, or French. The
narratives of regionalism emerge from a different social world than the one we
have been taught in conventional ways to ‘read.’ 89
However, not every critic is optimistic about the future of regions and regionalism in
postmodern times: Richard Pickard warns about the prospect of a post-regional world,
which we will find ourselves in, “once total consumer colonization has been
accomplished.” 90 Hence, he is sure that “the only defence against becoming a gas station
for the information superhighway is to become a coherent region, which means coming to
an understanding of what your own region means.” 91 Pickard’s further anxiety about
postmodern cyberculture occurring indoors does seem rather absurd in a postcolonial
context with its cluster of underdeveloped, non-urban and tropical regions. His worry that
“if there is no reason to go outside, region and location have lost meaning” 92 might hold
true when thinking of Asian high rise ‘Tiger Cities’ like Hongkong and Shanghai, or of
American suburbia. However, it does not apply to a place like Hawai’i which has lots of
reasons to go outside (and which still has native Hawaiians living in shacks or on the
beach.) 93 To put it in the words of Rob Wilson, professor of English at the University of
Hawai’i and an eloquent cultural critic: “The local Pacific as space of cultural production
88 Westfall 1980: 12.
89 Marjorie Pryse, “Writing Out of the Gap: Regionalism, Resistance, and Relational Reading,” in Riegel et
al. 1998: 19-34, here 33.
90 Richard Pickard, “Magic Environmentalism: Writing/Logging (in) British Columbia,” in Riegel et al.
1998: 109.
91 Pickard in Riegel et al. 1998: 106.
92 Ibid.: 110.
93 A few examples of the everyday usage of Hawaii’s particular out-of-doors might be the practice of
before- or after-work-surfing, the ritual of beach park parties, the extent of fishing, hunting, diving, and
spearfishing both for recreation and for food, and the importance of porches, carports, or ‘wraparound
lanais’ (railed balconies or verandahs that encircle the whole house) for neighborhood gatherings, not to
mention the frequently ‘open’ architecture visible in public as well as private buildings.
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