A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

Maori, Aborigine and Hawaiian writings: By 1980, these had already begun to be
anthologized and analyzed in their respective countries. Thus, the separate development
of Pacific literatures had been well on its way when they were recognized as such. Let me
however quote somewhat extensively from Wendt’s introductory chapter to Nuanua to
relate his discernment of a pan-Pacific postcolonialism:
Even in Australia, Aotearoa and Hawai’i, which from the viewpoint of their
indigenous populations are still colonies, our post-colonial literature declares
itself to be different from and opposed to colonial literature […] How does our
literature show itself to be post-colonial? By what it says and how it says it. We
have indigenised and enriched the language of the colonisers and used it to declare
our independence and uniqueness; to analyse colonialism itself and its effects
upon us; to free ourselves of the mythologies created about us in colonial
literature. […] For me the post in post-colonial does not just mean after, it also
means around, through, out of, alongside, and against. In the new literatures in
English it means all these. […] Our literature puts us at centre stage, with our
accents, dress, good and evil, dreams and visions. As in other former colonies,
much of our early literature is nationalistic, angry, protesting, lamenting a huge
loss. That loss is defined differently from country to country. 152
Some writers went to England or the U.S. for higher education, but more commonly they
circulated in the Pacific, many going to USP in Fiji or to New Zealand, if only for better
publication opportunities. In general, a large number of Pacific Islanders continues to
migrate to Australia, New Zealand, or Hawai’i to work, to the extent that some island
countries are viewed as ‘remittance economies’ because they depend on the money these
migrants send home to their families, a tendency that again mirrors the Caribbean
situation.
Obviously, South Pacific writers have been wrestling with Western stereotypes
and myths about the noble savage, the cannibal, and the uninhibited island woman. When
analyzing Subramani’s short story “Tropical Traumas,” for example, Sudesh Mishra finds
the text
a shrewd exposé of an Oceania imagined by generations of European traders,
administrators, scientists, priests, beachcombers, sailors, buccaneers and tourists.
152 Wendt 1995: 2-4.
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