New Oceania: Modernisms and Modernities in the Pacific (Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature)

For so long figured in European discourses as the antithesis of modernity, the Pacific Islands have remained all but absent from the modernist studies’ critical map. Yet, as the chapters of __New Oceania: Modernisms and Modernities in the Pacific__ collectively show, Pacific artists and writers have been as creatively engaged in the construction and representation of modernity as any of their global counterparts. In the second half of the twentieth century, driving a still ongoing process of decolonisation, Pacific Islanders forged an extraordinary cultural and artistic movement. Integrating Indigenous aesthetics, forms, and techniques with a range of other influences — realist novels, avant-garde poetry, anti-colonial discourse, biblical verse, Indian mythology, American television, Bollywood film — Pacific artists developed new creative registers to express the complexity of the region’s transnational modernities. __New Oceania__ presents the first sustained account of the modernist dimensions of this period, while presenting timely reflections on the ideological and methodological limitations of the global modernism rubric. Breaking new critical ground, it brings together scholars from a range of backgrounds to demonstrate the relevance of modernism for Pacific scholars, and the relevance of Pacific literature for modernist scholars. Cover Half Title Series Title Copyright Dedication Contents List of Figures List of Contributors A Note on Language and Spelling Acknowledgements 1 ‘The Space Between’: Oceanian Literature and Modernist Studies 2 ‘Kidnapped by a Band of Western Philosophers’: Modernism and Modernity in Oceania 3 ATOMic Modern: Pacific Women’s Modernities and the Writing of Nuclear Resistance 4 No Ordinary Modernism: Hone Tuwhare’s First Book of Verse 5 ‘Our Own Identity’: Albert Wendt, James Joyce, and the Indigenisation of Influence 6 Mapping Modernity in Guam: The Unincorporated Ecologies of Craig Santos Perez’s Poetics 7 Africana Calls, Pasifika Responses: Ellison’s Invisible Man, Soaba’s Wanpis, and Oceanian Literary Modernism 8 Oceanian Modernism and the Little Magazine 9 ‘[Modernism] in Māori Life’: Te Ao Hou 10 Emergent Modernities in Pacific Theatre: Nina Nawalowalo and The Conch 11 Diving-Dress Gods: Modernism, Cargoism, and the Fale Aitu Tradition in John Kneubuhl’s ‘The Perils of Penrose’ 12 Oceanian Knowing and Decolonial Love in Sia Figiel’s Freelove 13 On Memory and Modernity: Sudesh Mishra’s Oceania 14 Oceania, the Planetary, and the New Modernist Studies: A Coda Index Breaking new critical ground, New Oceania: Modernisms and Modernities in the Pacific brings together scholars from a range of backgrounds to demonstrate the relevance of modernism for Pacific scholars, and the relevance of Pacific literature for modernist scholars.