Berths and Anchorages: Pacific Cultural Studies from Oceania

The canoe has been a dominant metaphor constituting the discursive growth of Pacific studies in its transformation from a multidisciplinary to interdisciplinary project. In the first half of this essay I grapple with extending the canoe metaphors discussed by Vicente Diaz and J Kēkaulani Kauanui in their 2001 article “Native Pacific Cultural Studies on the Edge,” and in the latter part I discuss programming at the Oceania Centre for Arts and Culture and Pacific Studies at the University of the South Pacific. Not wholly rejecting the “seductive metaphor” of Pacific studies as an interdisciplinary canoe between fields of study, my intention rather is to seek how to expand the metaphor productively toward anchorages and berths to produce homegrown theorizing of our intellectual practices, including creative practices. Practice-based research paradigms are increasingly being utilized in Pacific studies, and this kind of re-engagement with the discourse is productive. For a more holistic and pragmatic as well as intellectual and political Pacific studies, the canoe must make landfall, to complete a hermeneutic circle that began with the theoretical placing of the canoe as the animus of the interdisciplinary project in 2001.