A QUEST FOR MĀ’OHI LITERATURE AND MĀ’OHI IDENTITY IN TITAUA PEU’S REPRESENTATIONS OF FRANCE IN MUTISMES AND PINA
A QUEST FOR MĀ’OHI LITERATURE AND MĀ’OHI IDENTITY IN TITAUA PEU’S REPRESENTATIONS OF FRANCE IN MUTISMES AND PINA
Date
2020
Authors
Courat, Romy Meggane Maeva
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Ségeral, Nathalie
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French
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In the wake of centuries of Euroamerican literature, fundamentally rooted in Western-centered visions of Polynesia, potent alternative perspectives have now become visible in the emerging literary practices of Tahitian and other Polynesian authors over the last decades. This thesis specifically seeks to illuminate Tahitian representations of Metropolitan France and particularly in Titaua Peu’s works. It argues that recent Tahitian fiction can be very useful in understanding the complicated relationship between French Polynesia and Metropolitan France and how this relationship has changed or not over time. This thesis concentrates on Titaua Peu’s Mutismes (2003) and Pina (2017) to examine how a Tahitian author is reframing Polynesia, and in this case Tahiti, and its people’s visions of Metropolitan France, to stand in contrast to familiar tropes of Pacific personhood from Bougainville to Loti to Gauguin into the twentieth or even twenty-first century. After centuries of French literature dealing with Tahiti, Mā’ohi writers are offering their own vision, in stark contrast to prior colonial perspectives. These authors problematize past representations, and foreground highly contemporary political issues. This thesis will analyze Peu’s works, through the lenses of language, expression and representations. Through textual analysis, this thesis will show how Metropolitan France is represented. In three chapters, it shows how Peu’s work can be classified as a Mā’ohi voice, how her representations of Metropolitan France are important to understand the Tahitian perspective and how her epilogues highlight questions on history and the French Polynesian political status and relationship with Metropolitan France.
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French literature,
Metropole,
Representation,
Tahitianness
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78 pages
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