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- Volume 4, Issue 2, 2016
Journal of New Zealand & Pacific Studies - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2016
Volume 4, Issue 2, 2016
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Spain, Germany and the United States in the Marshall Islands: Re-imagining the imperial in the Pacific
Authors: Dominic Alessio, Katherine Arnold and Patricia Ollé TejeroAbstractLike the spaces between islands on maps of the Pacific, there are gaps that exist in our historical understanding of this region of the world. This is especially true in relation to the history of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. This study examines some of those forgotten-about spaces whilst focusing on the history of former European colonial powers whose own imperial stories have also been overlooked in this region, namely Spain and Germany. In doing so it illustrates how this former Spanish territory morphed into a German one and discusses the significance of this transformation, and how it helped lay the groundwork for the beginning of the Second Reich. Whilst examining these European colonial histories this work also uncovers how the United States came to be involved in Micronesia and the long-term results of that development, specifically the establishment of Guam/Guåhån as one of the first United States overseas military bases and the utilisation of the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshalls for Cold War nuclear testing. It concludes by pointing out that much of this territory was obtained not by conquest but by purchase and lease, thereby underscoring an oft-forgotten, but vitally important, method of territorial aggrandizement that continues to this day.
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Autonomy, indigeneity, citizenship: The unfinished business of decolonization in the French South Pacific
More LessAbstractIn the last 30 years, the entropic forces of decolonization have led the French State to grant their last territories still held in the South Pacific a significant dose of selfgovernment, thus allowing them to take some distance from the once all-powerful centre. Today, France is looking for an honourable conclusion to its antipodean colonial romance. The fate of two dissimilar territories is at stake: New Caledonia, originally intended as a colony of settlement, is the country of the indigenous Kanaks, and still home to a sizeable minority descended from the French settlers, while French Polynesia is composed of a number of islands scattered across a vast expanse of the Pacific, and dominated by a population of Polynesian descent. The prospect of a civil war in New Caledonia in the mid-1980s led the French government to negotiate a settlement introducing considerable constitutional change. In contrast, in French Polynesia the drawn-out political struggle between those demanding independence and the partisans of increased autonomy within the French Republic has turned into a stalemate. To add insult to injury in the eyes of the French government, the United Nations (UN) has recently re-inscribed French Polynesia on the list of the last countries to be decolonized. This article will focus on one hand on the administrative ‘overseas’ framework defining the French dependencies in the South Pacific, and on the other hand on the ambiguities of the French official discourse on citizenship in these former colonies. It will examine how the debate on the status of the Pacific territories has been restructured around autonomy versus independence, and citizenship versus indigeneity. The issue of recognition of diversity will also be addressed in a French national context where indifference and ignorance generally prevail towards such distant exotic lands.
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‘I thought I was like you, but I’m not’: Identity, masculinity and make-believe in Taika Waititi’s Boy (2010)
More LessAbstractThis article sets out to argue that the growing maturity of a national cinema permits a challenge to established tropes and representations that can result in innovative and original visions. Taika Waititi’s Boy (2010) is a film that deliberately confronts the conventions that have developed around the representation of Māori culture and Māori characters on-screen. By avoiding either depictions of urban violence and deprivation or mythic fantasies, the film is able to collapse notions of difference and instead focus on a transnational experience of popular culture and growing up. Furthermore, it seems to evade the weighty responsibility that often appears to restrict Indigenous cinema by embracing contradictions and fluidity. Such an approach has encouraged considerable debate amongst critics and scholars and it is the aim of this article to engage with both negative and positive responses to the film in order to contribute to the ongoing discussions. Specifically, this article will explore the film’s nostalgia for 1980s popular culture, the use of daydreams and makebelieve sequences, location, and Waititi’s approach to identity and masculinity in order to highlight its inventive and unconventional themes and style. Ultimately, the controversy and competing discourses that have emerged around the film suggest that, far from negating a sense of national, cultural identity, it has generated important reflections on the cinematic representation of Māori people and Māori culture.
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‘Nowhere to bury the dead’: Finitude, nationalism and artistic communities in Janet Frame’s Living in the Maniototo
More LessAbstractThe ambivalent combination of postmodernism and postcolonialism in Janet Frame’s novel Living in the Maniototo has been discussed by critics such as Janet Wilson and Marc Delrez. This article aims to find an alternative explanation for her ‘transcendental’ postmodernism that does not reside in Frame’s postcolonizing impulse, but rather in a more universal drive that can be explained through the work of Jean-Luc Nancy and Maurice Blanchot and their reinvention of the notion of community. While in other studies I have systematically outlined the failure of communities in Frame, the present article explores her paradoxical community of one. In its inextricable connection with death, this model offers the potential to ‘unwork’, in Nancy’s words, traditional or ‘operative’ communities. As I will argue, the approach to death is radically different in Frame’s later fiction. The result is a community of one that needs to be redefined in relation to Frame’s ambivalent approach to the community of artists and New Zealand patriotism. Jacques Derrida and Pierre Bourdieu will provide the theoretical rationale to understand Frame’s peculiar experimentation that leads her to a communitarian revision rather than to the solipsism of which she has been frequently accused.
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Reviews
AbstractWINDING UP THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN THE PACIFIC ISLANDS, W. DAVID MCINTYRE (2014) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 278 pp., ISBN 978 0 1987 0243 6 (hbk), US$105
TANGATA WHENUA: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY, ATHOLL ANDERSON, JUDITH BINNEY AND AROHA HARRIS (2014) Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 544 pp., ISBN 978 1 9271 3141 1 (hbk), NZ$99.99
PĒWHAIRANGI: BAY OF ISLANDS MISSIONS AND MĀORI 1814 TO 1845, ANGELA MIDDLETON (2014) Dunedin: Otago University Press, 342 pp., ISBN 978 1 8775 7853 3 (pbk), NZ$50
NIUE 1774–1974: 200 YEARS OF CONTACT AND CHANGE, MARGARET POINTER (2015) Dunedin: Otago University Press, 384 pp., ISBN 978 1 8775 7895 3 (pbk), NZ$50
SAMOA’S JOURNEY 1962–2012: ASPECTS OF HISTORY, LEASIOLAGI MALAMA MELEISEA, ELLIE MELEISEA AND PENELOPE SCHOEFFEL (EDS) (2012) Wellington: Victoria University Press, 245 pp., ISBN 978 0 8647 3835 6 (pbk), US$40
CLIMATE CHANGE AND TRADITION IN A SMALL ISLAND STATE: THE RISING TIDE, PETER RUDIAK-GOULD (2013) Abingdon: Routledge, 226 pp., ISBN 978 0 4158 3249 6 (hbk), £90
A FARAWAY, FAMILIAR PLACE: AN ANTHROPOLOGIST RETURNS TO PAPUA NEW GUINEA, MICHAEL FRENCH SMITH (2013) Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 248 pp., ISBN: 978 0 8248 5344 0 (pbk), US$25
THE PACIFIC WAR: AFTERMATHS, REMEMBRANCE AND CULTURE, CHRISTINA TWOMEY AND ERNEST KOH (EDS) (2015) London: Routledge, 300 pp., ISBN 978 0 4157 4064 7 (hbk), £95
CALLS TO ARMS: NEW ZEALAND SOCIETY AND COMMITMENT TO THE GREAT WAR, STEVEN LOVERIDGE (2014) Wellington: Victoria University Press, 332 pp., ISBN 978 0 8647 3967 4 (pbk), NZ$40
WHITE GHOSTS, YELLOW PERIL: CHINA AND NEW ZEALAND 1790–1950, STEVAN ELDRED-GRIGG WITH ZENG DAZHENG (2014) Dunedin: Otago University Press, 384 pp., ISBN 978 1 8775 7865 6 (pbk), NZ$55
A BLIGHTED FAME: GEORGE S. EVANS 1802–1868. A LIFE, HELEN RIDDIFORD (2014) Wellington: Victoria University Press, 544 pp., ISBN 978 0 8647 3896 7 (hbk), NZ$60
THE HEALTHY COUNTRY? A HISTORY OF LIFE AND DEATH IN NEW ZEALAND, ALISTAIR WOODWARD AND TONY BLAKELY (2014) Auckland: Auckland University Press, 320 pp., ISBN 978 1 86940 813 8 (pbk), NZ$49.99
THE CAPTAIN AND ‘THE CANNIBAL’: AN EPIC STORY OF EXPLORATION, KIDNAPPING, AND THE BROADWAY STAGE, JAMES FAIRHEAD (2015) New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 392 pp., ISBN 978 0 3001 9877 5 (hbk), £25
MAURICE GEE, A LITERARY COMPANION: THE FICTION FOR YOUNG READERS, ELIZABETH HALE (ED.) (2014) Otago: Otago University Press, 208 pp., ISBN 978 1 8775 7884 7 (pbk), NZ$45
UN UOMO SOLO, JOHN MULGAN, MARINELLA ROCCA LONGO (ED.), VALENTINA NAPOLI (TRANS.) (2015) Rome: Edizioni Kappa, 214 pp., ISBN 978 8 8651 4219 6 (pbk), €18
BAREFOOT YEARS, MARTIN EDMOND (2014) Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 100 pp., ISBN 978 1 9272 7767 6 (pbk), NZ$14.99
CREEKS AND KITCHENS: A CHILDHOOD MEMOIR, MAURICE GEE (2014) Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 52 pp., ISBN 978 1 9272 7743 0 (pbk), NZ$14.99
GEERING AND GOD: 1965–71. THE HERESY TRIAL THAT DIVIDED NEW ZEALAND, LLOYD GEERING (2014) Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 92 pp., ISBN 978 1 9272 7759 1 (pbk), NZ$14.99
HAERENGA: EARLY MĀORI JOURNEYS ACROSS THE GLOBE, VINCENT O’MALLEY (2015) Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 168 pp., ISBN 978 0 9083 2119 3 (pbk), NZ$14.99
THE INEQUALITY DEBATE: AN INTRODUCTION, MAX RASHBROOKE (2014) Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 104 pp., ISBN 978 1 9272 7745 4 (pbk), NZ$14.99
NEW MYTHS AND OLD POLITICS: THE WAITANGI TRIBUNAL AND THE CHALLENGE OF TRADITION, TIPENE O’REGAN (2014) Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 76 pp., ISBN 978 1 9272 7766 9 (pbk), NZ$14.99
ON COMING HOME, PAULA MORRIS (2015) Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 96 pp., ISBN 978 0 9083 2111 7 (pbk), NZ$14.99
THE PIKETTY PHENOMENON, NEW ZEALAND PERSPECTIVES (2014) Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 192 pp., ISBN 978 1 9272 7771 3 (pbk), NZ$14.99
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