Contemporary indigenous women's fiction from the PacificDiscourses of resistance and the (Re)writing of spaces of violence and desire

Abstract

This project intends to explore the complex effects of colonialism, independence and migration upon the socio-political dynamics of South Pacific cultures, through the study of their literatures in English and visual art. The main aim of this work is to interrogate the way women are represented in the post and neocolonial contexts of the Pacific, focusing mostly on Hawaii, Samoa and Tahiti, in order to investigate the diversity and similarities in the way the female body becomes both objectified and commodified, but also a site of subversion through which another perspective of history can be told and validated. It will examine the obsession with Polynesian (female) sexuality within the Western (European and American) discursive practices of representation, the internal gender politics of Polynesian societies (its similarities and differences), and the influence of Western education (from the first contact to the present), media and consumer capitalism (tourism and commodification of cultures) upon Polynesian young population. In relation to this, it will pay attention to the concerns and impact of globalization and diaspora culture within contemporary Pacific literature, art and theory.