Representing Pacific tattoos: Issues in postcolonial critical practice

Abstract

This article questions certain practices in postcolonial criticism, asking whether such criticism is in danger of performing a neo–colonial commodification of texts. In our assertion of subjugated knowledges, do we risk essentializing the cultures from which they come, thereby performing an act of primitivism? It examines two contemporary representations of Pacific tattooing, namely Samoan novelist Sia Figiel’s second novel, They Who Do Not Grieve, and the film Once Were Warriors, directed by Lee Tamahori and based on the novel by Alan Duff. In the analysis of tattooing in these texts, the article seeks to avoid the dangers of essentialism in favour of examining how Pacific peoples might utilize the tradition of tattooing as a contemporary identity practice with links to pre–contact culture. © 2008 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.