Abubakar, Sadiya
(2018)
The Samoan Side: How Sia Figiel Debunks
Orientalism In Where We Once Belonged.
International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies (IJAPS), 14 (2).
pp. 105-120.
ISSN ISSN: 1823-6243
Abstract
The result of the frst (and the subsequent) contact between the West and the East is an
Oriental documentation, colonial establishment and notional subject-making of the
East by the supposedly civilised and advanced West. Like all Orients, the Pacifc has
been much represented and made subjects of theoretical discourses, characterised
as bare-breasted and sexually available women, murderous and lecherous men,
idly tropical islands inhabited by primitive people with little or no culture. Samoa
has, specifcally, been a subject of anthropological discourse for many decades,
following the Mead-Freeman controversy. Margaret Mead concludes that in Samoa,
the transition from childhood, through adolescence, and into adulthood was one
of relative ease and that sexuality is so free that women usually defer marriage to
enjoy casual sex. Derek Freeman questions Mead’s fndings, gives contrary views
and unifed the whole Samoan Islands as one and same. However, some Samoan
(and non-Samoan) academics, writers and researchers debunk such Oriental
representations. This paper analyses Sia Figiel’s explication of Samoa in Where We
Once Belonged as a response to these Western anthropological studies and assertions
on Samoan sexuality, coming-of-age, and the unifcation of Samoan Islands and
overgeneralisations of Samoans’ dispositions. It argues that such claims are not so
accurate but rather, made up of exaggerated instances and furnished imaginations
for foregrounding Orientalism.
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