A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

solidarity as a bulwark against the further erosion of indigenous cultural values. The
Papuan writer Epeli Hau’ofa has taken up Albert Wendt’s leitmotif of a “new Oceania” in
his essays “Our Sea of Islands” and “The Ocean in us.” 148 Arguing for a recollection of
the commonalities of Pacific Islanders, Hau’ofa has made the ocean and its protection the
central focus of his reasoning. Consequently, aquatic metaphors infuse his rhetorical
strategies. 149 Both the obvious centrality of the ocean in the experience of an islander and
its metaphorical usage to transport various island-specific feelings and claims can be
found in Local writing too.
However, the idea of the ‘Pacific Way’ has not had the same impact as a
movement such as Négritude, and it is important to stress that a ‘reading public’ exists
virtually only in the urban centers, where a nascent bourgeoisie with the leisure and
interest for literature has emerged. This raises the question of readership. The bulk of
South Pacific writing is read in schools and universities, which in turn relativizes the
potential impact of critical and change-directed texts. Mana, the region’s literary journal,
is distributed as part of Pacific Islands Monthly and thus reaches at least ten thousand
subscribers in Australia, New Zealand and Europe. Another important institution is the
Brisbane-based South Pacific Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language
Studies, SPACLALS, which has stimulated new writing through literary contests,
published anthologies, and fostered critical dialogue through reviews in its journal SPAN
and by arranging Pacific Writers Conferences.
In 1980, Wendt edited a first anthology of Pacific Island writing, Lali, 150 which
was a collection of pieces gathered from Mana. In 1995 he edited a new collection,
Nuanua, 151 to showcase the development of South Pacific literature since Lali. In both he
included writings from Papua New Guinea, and gave a simple reason for excluding
148 Epeli Hau’ofa, “Our Sea of Islands,” in Eric Waddell/Vijay Naidu/Epeli Hau’ofa (eds.), A New Oceania:
Rediscovering Our Sea of Islands, Suva 1993 (reprinted in The Contemporary Pacific 6/1994: 147-61), and
“The Ocean in Us,” in Hanlon/White 2000: 113-31.
149 E.g.: “We have not been very successful in our attempts so far because, while fishing for the elusive
school of tuna, we have lost sight of the ocean that surrounds and sustains us. […]But the Pacific Way was
a shallow ideology that was swept away by the rising tide of regional disunity of the 1980s” (Hau’ofa in
Hanlon/White 2000: 113-5, emphasis mine). For Hau’ofa’s conception of the ocean as an inspirational
reservoir, see also footnote # 590 and the quotation it refers to.
150 Albert Wendt (ed.), Lali: A Pacific Anthology, Auckland 1980.
151 Albert Wendt (ed.), Nuanua: Pacific Writing since 1980, Honolulu 1995. Nuanua means ‘rainbow’ in
most Polynesian languages, and was chosen as a title to signify diversity and richness. Note also that
Nuanua was the first book to be published in UH Press’ newly inaugurated series Talanoa, mentioned
above (page 43).
45