TCP [The Contemporary Pacific], 2010 - Volume 22, Number 2
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Item 22:2 Contributors - The Contemporary Pacific(University of Hawai‘i Press, 2010)Item 22:2 Table of Contents - The Contemporary Pacific(University of Hawai‘i Press, 2010)Item A Search for the New Oceania(University of Hawai‘i Press, 2010) Whimp, GraemeAlbert Wendt described the occasion of the writing of his groundbreaking and still influential 1976 essay, “Towards a New Oceania,” as the conclusion of “a return to where I was born.” It is clear that the return is from an immersion in some of the moribund elements of the postindependence Pacific, but the form of the return itself is by no means clear from a casual reading. Drawing on a variety of texts written before and after 1976, this brief investigation seeks to discover the location and, more importantly, the nature of that return. Discarding the pos- sibility of the return being to then-Western Sāmoa or, indeed to any geographical location, or even of it being in any sense a temporal or traditional one, I turn to the possibility that the return is a metaphorical one to an Oceanic imagination originally encountered in the storytelling of Wendt’s grandmother and reemerging in the new Pacific writing of the 1970s.Item After ‘Aoga(University of Hawai‘i Press, 2010) Laita, LilyItem Against Tradition(University of Hawai‘i Press, 2010) Mallon, SeanAlbert Wendt’s career as a writer and academic is well documented. Less widely known are his contributions to cultural development through his service on advi- sory groups and boards for different institutions. To these roles he brought a strong intellect and influential voice as a cultural activist and administrator. In the early 1990s, Wendt was an adviser for two of New Zealand’s leading cultural institutions. One of his key interventions was to critique the use of the terms “tra- dition” and “traditional” in the representation of Pacific arts and cultural prac- tices. In this article, I reflect on Wendt’s written and vocal protestations against the uncritical use of these terms by Pacific Islanders and others in cultural discourse in New Zealand. In particular, I analyze his influence on the curatorial representa- tion of Pacific peoples at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.Item Albert Wendt's Critical and Creative Legacy in Oceania: An Introduction(University of Hawai‘i Press, 2010) Teaiwa, Teresia; Marsh, Selina TusitalaThis special issue of The Contemporary Pacific features a selection of artists and academics who have emerged in the wake of Albert Wendt’s pioneering (and occasionally polarizing) career as the Pacific’s most prominent poet, novelist, essayist, academic, and painter. The contributors conscientiously grapple with both the possibilities and the problematics that his work has opened up for them. Taken as a whole, this special issue marks out the space of a contemporary Oceanic imaginary and politics that our contributors have been able to discover, revisit, claim, contest, expand, and depart from—all as a direct consequence of Wendt’s having traveled there first. This introduction delineates the significance of Wendt’s critical and creative legacy in Oceania by providing a brief précis of Wendt’s literary, institutional, cultural, and political achievements. It articulates the vision of this collection: that our generation of artists and scholars, and subsequent generations of Pacific public intellectuals must begin or purposefully continue to (a) draw on both scholarship and art as equally valid sources of critical and creative perception for the consolidation and invigoration of social and political analysis in Oceania, and (b) foster a sense of intellectual history to successfully navigate the ongoing challenges of representation by and for the Pacific.Item Cowboys in the House of Polynesia(University of Hawai‘i Press, 2010) Salesa, DamonDespite Albert Wendt’s departure from the formal discipline of history as a graduate student, he has established himself at the center of an alternate, influential stream of Pacific history writing. This has turned on the crafting of a new relationship to the past that is radical and dissenting, not only against colonialism, but certain iterations of indigenous culture, politics, and tradition. Wendt pursues this not only through remembering ancestral lives and worlds, but also through inventions and innovative appropriations—such as the Samoan cowboy. Cowboys appear repeatedly in Wendt’s work, often at crucial junctures. But his utilization of the cowboy is not, as some might suppose, simply imaginative. As early as 1914 Samoans had appropriated cowboy films and narratives, and cowboys were to remain compelling and powerful features in Samoan life, as they were in other colonized locations from New Zealand to the Congo. The mythic qualities of the cowboy that appealed to some Samoans are much the same as those that Wendt orchestrates in his work through cowboys. The Samoans who laid claim to being cowboys were inhabiting a renegade, dangerous masculinity, one that was decisive and good, which opposed colonialism but which was also critical of many dimensions of tradition and local life. As such, the Samoan cowboy is a specially revealing figure not only for Wendt’s work, but for understanding the Samoan past.Item E-mailing Albert(University of Hawai‘i Press, 2010) Marsh, Selina TusitalaItem Featured Art: Michel Tuffery(University of Hawai‘i Press, 2010)Item Fiji in Review: Issues and Events, 2009(University of Hawai‘i Press, 2010) Fraenkel, Jon