Even though this is a little ahead of assigned readings, I loved this topic--
I
found Rob Wilson’s article “From the Sublime to the Devious: Writing the
Experimental/Local Pacific” a very connective piece of work, acting almost as a
freeway interchange between many of the readings we have been assigned, as well
as with many of the important themes found in Pacific Literature as a whole.
Because of this, I almost feel overloaded with topics and tangents I could
discuss regarding this reading, something I think Wilson does with a purpose.
His article enlightens the reader to all of the different pathways of Hawaiian
Avant-Garde poetics, Asian-American-Hawaiian ‘local’ literature, and of course
American tourist literature. He attempts to show just how complicated and
web-like life is for those living in the Pacific by constantly diverting the
reader down another path.
At
the same time however, Rob’s content is telling the reader that there is some
kind of post-postmodernist writing style being borne within the Pacific, in
order to portray their land and identity struggles within post-postcolonial
Hawai’i. This brings me back to his smallest paragraph, and the title of this
writing—“scripto ergo sum.” Wilson describes this motto as “language-centered” at
a moment of “writerly adventure and lyric oblivion.” The motto translates to “I
write therefore I am” a clear play on the phrase “cogito ergo sum” which means “I
think therefore I am,” a notion familiar in American lifestyles—the classic
picking one’s self up from their boot straps and making it in the larger scheme
of things. The importance of the emphasis on writing (scripto) is Rob’s claim
that the Hawaiians are re-creating their native culture, not by returning to
their roots, but by repressing their cultural oppressors—rather than conforming
to Euro-American literary styles, the local writers are creating their own. Wilson
argues that you can pick out a real local writer, by their use of
post-postmodernist form, which basically means no form at all. This then
becomes the Pacific’s mode of pulling up their bootstraps; their literary forms
will release them from any colonial restraints.
Tori -
ReplyDeleteThis was an ambitious post, and I applaud you for your original readings and I think your argument is cogent and leads you to the proper overall conclusion, yet some of your framework is flawed. Cogito ergo sum was Descartes' axiom that has little to do with bootstraps in whatever context, but merely with existing, with the self-awareness of existing becoming self-evident that one was therefore indeed - existing. So Rob's trope on Descartes would be closer to something along the lines of a local literature writing itself into existence, as it did at Bamboo Ridge, and being language-centered because it's use of pidgin gives it a rooted, specific locality, thereby making the literature an agent for collective identity. (Also, just a fyi for future use, the oppressed are unable to repress the oppressors - it's just the complete opposite in their power dynamic. What the oppressed are capable of is acts of personal and collective protest, which can snowball into a social movement, and in some cases, possibly, a revolution.)
- Trey