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Oceanic Encounters: Exchange, Desire, Violence

Oceanic Encounters: Exchange, Desire, Violence 306 Reviews MARGARET JOLLY,SERGE TCHERKEZOFF &DARRELL TRYON (Eds) Canberra, ANU E Press, 2009 xix 344 pp., ill., endnotes, index, ISBN: 978-1-921-53628-1 (paperback), A$39.95, Online version ISBN: 978-1-921-53629-8 (pdf ) ‘First contact’, a familiar trope in Pacific history, seems wholly inadequate, if not somewhat redundant, after reading this collection of essays. In their prelude Margaret Jolly and Serge Tcherke ´ zoff set out some of the limitations of older conceptualisa- tions of contact history. Historians have privileged engagements between Islanders and Europeans, downplaying the centuries of prior and ongoing encounters between Pacific peoples. In fact, as Jolly demonstrates in chapter three, the arrival of European voyagers might alternately ‘sediment’ or ‘evaporate’ in indigenous histories, just as twentieth-century encounters with European colonists, as Pascale Bonnemere and Pierre Lemonnier suggest, are not necessarily prominent markers in indigenous collective memory (chapter ten). ‘First contact’ histories have also favoured a physical encounter ‘as the critical originary moment’ (p. 3), yet embodied experience exists in a complex relationship to European and indigenous imaginaries. Jolly and Tcherke ´ zoff also question temporal boundaries: ‘What counts as first?’ they ask (p. 13). Encounters had no ‘certain teleology’, but were contingent, unfolding ‘though the transforming dialectic of action http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology Taylor & Francis

Oceanic Encounters: Exchange, Desire, Violence

Steel, Frances
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology , Volume 13 (3): 3 – Jun 1, 2012
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Oceanic Encounters: Exchange, Desire, Violence

Abstract

306 Reviews MARGARET JOLLY,SERGE TCHERKEZOFF &DARRELL TRYON (Eds) Canberra, ANU E Press, 2009 xix 344 pp., ill., endnotes, index, ISBN: 978-1-921-53628-1 (paperback), A$39.95, Online version ISBN: 978-1-921-53629-8 (pdf ) ‘First contact’, a familiar trope in Pacific history, seems wholly inadequate, if not somewhat redundant, after reading this collection of essays. In their prelude Margaret Jolly and Serge Tcherke ´ zoff set out some of the limitations of older...
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Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Copyright
Copyright Frances Steel
ISSN
1740-9314
eISSN
1444-2213
DOI
10.1080/14442213.2012.680711
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

306 Reviews MARGARET JOLLY,SERGE TCHERKEZOFF &DARRELL TRYON (Eds) Canberra, ANU E Press, 2009 xix 344 pp., ill., endnotes, index, ISBN: 978-1-921-53628-1 (paperback), A$39.95, Online version ISBN: 978-1-921-53629-8 (pdf ) ‘First contact’, a familiar trope in Pacific history, seems wholly inadequate, if not somewhat redundant, after reading this collection of essays. In their prelude Margaret Jolly and Serge Tcherke ´ zoff set out some of the limitations of older conceptualisa- tions of contact history. Historians have privileged engagements between Islanders and Europeans, downplaying the centuries of prior and ongoing encounters between Pacific peoples. In fact, as Jolly demonstrates in chapter three, the arrival of European voyagers might alternately ‘sediment’ or ‘evaporate’ in indigenous histories, just as twentieth-century encounters with European colonists, as Pascale Bonnemere and Pierre Lemonnier suggest, are not necessarily prominent markers in indigenous collective memory (chapter ten). ‘First contact’ histories have also favoured a physical encounter ‘as the critical originary moment’ (p. 3), yet embodied experience exists in a complex relationship to European and indigenous imaginaries. Jolly and Tcherke ´ zoff also question temporal boundaries: ‘What counts as first?’ they ask (p. 13). Encounters had no ‘certain teleology’, but were contingent, unfolding ‘though the transforming dialectic of action

Journal

The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology – Taylor & Francis

Published: Jun 1, 2012

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