Transforming the Insider-Outsider Perspective: Postcolonial Fiction from the Pacific

Abstract

Historically, the perspective assumed in writing about the Pacific until 1970 presented Pacific peoples through European eyes in roles of spectators and objects of European desires. After the beginning of what Paul Sharrad called an “authentic” Pacific literature, the perspective shifted to one that viewed life through the eyes of Pacific peoples. For example, “Parade” by Patricia Grace can be read as a trope of the transforming power of the insider perspective. When the insider perspective is examined in postcolonial terms, it is clear that “there can hardly be such a thing as an essential inside that can be homogeneously represented by all insiders” (Minh-ha 1995, 218). The realities of contemporary writers from the Pacific illustrate the complications in claiming privilege for Pacific voices because they are native. New fiction from the Pacific during the 1990s exhibits its postcolonial identity through the perspectives it adopts, through innovations in language use, and through its ability to transform traditional images of society and culture into images of postcoloniality.