Identitarian construction in French Polynesia: chronotopes of insularity

Abstract

Since its “discovery”, Tahiti has been shaped by the colonial imagination as an exotic Eden where you could go back to the happy and motionless time of myth. Within this very space though, lie the seeds of another temporality that will eventually precipitate the exotic dream into the flow of History. Facing these colonial visions, Polynesians have shaped new geo-cultural representations, designed to found a national identity. These new narratives, however, seem to be trapped into a History where no decolonization process ever occurred and which keeps looking back to an original Eden forever lost.

Keywords

• South-Pacific
• French Polynesia
• Post-colonial
• Identity