Cultural Crossings

Hitherto undiscovered yet fundamental historical and literary texts from the Pacific provide the subject matter of this collection of essays which sets out to explore the new forms of writing and hybrid identities emerging from both past and contemporary cultural contact and exchange in the 'South Seas'. This is also a weaving of the connections between Francophone and Anglophone writers long separated by colonial history. Luis Cardoso, writing in Portuguese from East Timor offers further points of contrast. The places of encounter - the beaches of Tahiti, the retelling of the texts of oral tradition, indigenous mastery of writing and appropriation of Western technology, the construction of contemporary Pacific anthologies or emerging post-colonial writing and translation - are sites of interaction and mixing that also involve negotiations of mana or power. From Pierre Loti's mythical and feminised Tahitians to Dewe Gorode's silenced women, the outcomes of such negotiations are dynamic and different syncretisms. Two chapters reexamine the theoretical concept of hybridity from these Pacific perspectives. Les articles publies dans le present recueil explorent les nouvelles formes d'ecriture et les identites hybrides issues du creuset des Mers du Sud. Relativement inconnus, les textes au coeur de ces articles n'en sont pas moins les oeuvres fondatrices de la region du Pacifique Sud dont ils constituent la trame historique et litteraire. Longtemps tenus a l'ecart les uns des autres par l'histoire coloniale de la region, les textes d'auteurs francophones et anglophones s'enchevetrent et se recoupent en de multiples domaines. La reprise des textes de tradition orale, l'appropriation autochtone des technologies occidentales, la creation d'anthologies contemporaines et l'emergence d'une litterature postcoloniale, sont autant de sites d'interactions et de convergence qui exigent une negociation permanente entre les pouvoirs et mana en presence. C'est une nouvelle facette du concept d'hybridite que nous proposent ces etudes de la region Pacifique."