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What Remains to Be Seen: Reclaiming the Visual Roots of Pacific Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Teresia Teaiwa
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Extract

Once Were People Without Writing. This is the Dominant Narrative of Pacific Literature. Such a View Rarely Takes the Lack of a recognizable alphabet or script in most of the inhabited islands of the Pacific at the time of contact with Europeans as a neutral difference. Lack is deficiency. Curiously, both detractors from and celebrants of Pacific literature agree that Pacific societies and cultures were introduced to writing by Europeans. The detractors see this originary lack as a permanent impediment to the development of worthy literature. (Few ever say, They lacked a written script, and they haven't produced any literature of note—it must be because they have a superior civilization.) The celebrants see the lack as a difference to be treasured along with the eventual acquisition of writing. So how can we better understand Pacific literature: where it came from and where it could take its readers?

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 125 , Issue 3 , May 2010 , pp. 730 - 736
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2010

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