'What writing has upset, writing must set right'

Colonialism and resistance in French Polynesia in Titaua Peu's novel "Mutismes"

Abstract

Politically engaged indigenous French Polynesian writers have critiqued the ideological discourses used to legitimate the ongoing colonial administration of their country and its economic and political dependence on metropolitan France. However, their writings also convey the continuing appeal of French cultural norms, if not the assimilationist model of French citizenship for some colonised French Polynesians. Titaua Peu's best-selling 2003 first novel "Mutismes", dedicated to the early independence leader Pouvana'a a Oopa, presents a robust critique of the French colonial legacy in Polynesia. Nonetheless, "Mutismes" also thematises a degree of ambivalence towards the ideological discourses underpinning colonialism, as well as the familiar alternative of full political independence or an expansion of rights within a French political framework. Peu's counter-discourse emphasizes colonial wounds as well as the irreducibility of ethnic and cultural mixing in Polynesia, but does not finally choose between independence and the current model of autonomy under French tutelage, calling instead for a new politics that goes beyond the terms of the current political stalemate.