Polynesia against Paris: Indigenous Anti-Nuclear Literature and the French Colonial Origins of Oceanian Reintegration

Abstract: This essay examines Francophone and Anglophone Indigenous Oceanian literature and art to argue that through the predominantly Polynesian response to French nuclear testing in Te Ao Mā’ohi (French Polynesia), French colonialism has inadvertently generated one key cultural movement toward post-colonial Oceanian reintegration—one that extends well beyond the Francophone Pacific. The essay first examines the prose fiction of Chantal Spitz, Rai a Mai [aka Michou Chaze], and Déwé Gorodé to understand Te Ao Mā’ohi’s (French Polynesia's) and Kanaky’s (New Caledonia's) shared experiences of French colonialism. It then contrasts the same authors’ treatment of French nuclear weapons testing, which was the central crisis in Mā’ohi literature but which was marginal to early Kanak prose fiction. The essay then brings this Francophone literature in direct conversation with the hitherto unexamined specifically anti-French dimension of better-known Anglophone Oceanian works from authors Witi Ihimaera (Maori) and Albert Wendt (Samoan) and visual artists Ralph Hotere (Maori) and Hiko‘ula Hanapi (Hawaiian). The essay then demonstrates how this mutual Francophone-Anglophone Polynesian response to French colonialism created a Polynesia-centric anti-French-colonial process of Oceanian reintegration, and how that engine of Pacific reintegration later encompassed Kanaky and generated new cultural and activist connections between the Francophone and Anglophone Pacific.