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-Simon as "trickster" figure
-Destructiveness is constructive
Untangling Humanity from the Mortal Coil
By: Erin Tagomori
Loss of "Maoriness"
Resistance to Colonization Through Form and Content
-Novel proper "begins" in isolation
--Kerewin's Tower
--Joe's loss of wife and biological son
--Simon as a mute, orphan child
-Each character is a point of origin in spiral
-Brathwaite: "Letter Sycorax"
-oral and written
-Traditional role in The Tempest
-rejecting "correct" way to speak
-Caliban becomes the "voice"/author
-subject of poem= humanization
-appropriating language to "speak out" against literary canon
Thesis:
To prevent "post-colonialism" from stagnating, perhaps we should look to the Maori worldview of the spiral that makes room for multiple "centers" united by the underlying humanity in us all.
Effects of Colonization
Masks Removed
-Thiong'o's "chaotic" encounter
-Lack of vocabulary to describe experiences because of cultural hegemony
-"How to undo it?"
-"Is this even possible?"
-"Post-colonial" literature attempts to "write back" to imperial center
-Problems?
-New binary relationship between colonial and post-colonial
-Chaos causes renewal
-Joe's violence toward Simon breaks them apart
-Spiral moves because "center" isn't stable
-Characters are stripped down to the bone
-end and beginning: re-birth
-must re-build identities and culture to restore balance
"the heart and muscles and mind of something perilous and new" (4)
The Bone People
Hopeful is Human
-"What does it mean to be Maori in a post-colonial world" becomes "What does it mean to be human in a post-colonial world?"
-inclusive instead of exclusive
-In-corporate tradition to create new body
-Tower becomes a Marae
-Joe becomes guardian of canoe god
-Hopeful "ending" that is really the beginning
-hopeful vs. happy
-"instruments of change" (4)
-Story itself "unfurls" from isolation to chaos to hope
-shape: organic rather than a fixed entity
-room for multiple "centers" rather than prioritizing one over the other
-"The End at the Beginning"
-progressive and cyclical
-"moves forward from the place it came from" (Knudsen 24)
-flows into one another
-How is it possible for individuals to come together and form a new way of "being?"