Decolonial Metatextualities: Strategies of Resistance in Three Contemporary Novels of Oceania

Authors

  • Mylène Charon Cergy Paris Université, France
  • Temiti LEHARTEL Université de Montpellier III, France & RMIT University, Australia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.22.1.2023.3964

Keywords:

decolonial, postcolonising, comparative literature, metafiction, First Nations, Aboriginal, Indigenous, intertextuality, reflexivity, Oceania

Abstract

Decolonial thinkers have stressed that to decolonise is not to reject the colonial legacy, but to deal with it, and to centre First Nations’ perspectives in its critique and in decolonising knowledge. As a critical relationship of a text – with itself, other texts, literature, and culture – metatextuality is a literary device operationalized in contemporary novels to resist persisting colonial powers. In this paper, we present three works of fiction by Indigenous writers of Oceania, and analyse their political use of metatextuality: L’île des rêves écrasés (Island of Shattered Dreams), by Tahitian author Chantal Spitz (1991); The Yield, by Aboriginal Wiradjuri novelist Tara June Winch (2019); and After Story, by Aboriginal Eualeyai/Kamillaroi writer Larissa Behrendt (2021). Centred on First Nations’ characters from Tahiti and Australia, these novels expose how they are racialised, marginalised, and constructed as inferior in postcolonising societies; and how, at the same time, these Indigenous characters are legitimate knowers and storytellers, reflecting on Western literature (often ironically), on their own marginality, and on their ancestral knowledges and languages. Borrowing from decolonial theorists Tlostanova and Mignolo’s (2012) ‘border thinking’, we propose that these novels deploy a ‘writing from the border’.

Author Biographies

Mylène Charon, Cergy Paris Université, France

Mylène Charon is a French white researcher trained in literature in France who developed and sustains an interest in feminist standpoint theories, intersectionality and critical race studies. She has family with settler origins in nipaluna/Hobart, lutruwita/Tasmania, Australia. She teaches literature and arts history at an undergraduate level at Cergy-Paris University, France, where she also teaches French as a Foreign Language. Mylène currently lives in Cergy, France. Her doctoral thesis (2020) compares contemporary poetry and visual arts by First Nations Australian women authors and artists. It particularly looks at their representation of power relationships and the intersection of race and sex. 

Temiti LEHARTEL, Université de Montpellier III, France & RMIT University, Australia

Temiti Lehartel is Tahitian and Samoan, born in Papeete, raised in Taravao, and educated in western institutions located between Mā’ohi Nui (French Polynesia), Naarm (Melbourne, Australia), and France. She returned to Mā’ohi Nui after covid struck to care for her parents and be of use to her community. She works as an agrégé professor for the CUPGE (Cycle Universitaire de Préparation au Grandes Écoles) at the University of French Polynesia and teaches at the Lycée Tuianu Le Gayic in Papara, Tahiti. As a PhD co-tutelle student with the University of Montpellier III and RMIT, Australia, her thesis focuses on relationality to land, ecology, Indigenous Oceanian literature and decolonial studies. Finding wisdom in Indigenous literature, she sees her interest in literatures beyond Tahitian and Samoan as important in order to deeply interact with the stories that are told throughout Oceania in order to sustain, nurture, and create ancestral and cultural relationships across oceans in and out of academia.

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Published

2023-07-03

How to Cite

Charon, M., & LEHARTEL, T. (2023). Decolonial Metatextualities: Strategies of Resistance in Three Contemporary Novels of Oceania. ETropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 22(1), 197–214. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.22.1.2023.3964

Issue

Vol. 22 No. 1 (2023): Decolonizing the Tropics: Part One

Section

Literatures and Literary Analyses

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