POLITICAL LIFE WRITING in the Pacific Reflections on Practice

POLITICAL LIFE WRITING in the Pacific Reflections on Practice POLITICAL LIFE WRITING in the Pacific Reflections on Practice Edited by JACK CORBETT AND BRIJ V. LAL Published by ANU Press The Australian National University Acton ACT 2601, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at http://press.anu.edu.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Title: Political life writing in the Pacific : reflections on practice / Jack Corbett, Brij V. Lal, editors. ISBN: 9781925022605 (paperback) 9781925022612 (ebook) Subjects: Politicians--Islands of the Pacific--Biography. Authorship--Social aspects. Political science--Social aspects. Research--Moral and ethical aspects. Islands of the Pacific--Politics and government--Biography. Other Creators/Contributors: Corbett, Jack, editor. Lal, Brij V., editor. Dewey Number: 324.2092 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover design and layout by ANU Press Printed by Griffin Press Revised edition © August 2015 ANU Press Contents List of Tables . vii Preface . ix Contributors . xi 1. Practising Political Life Writing in the Pacific . 1 Jack Corbett 2 . Political Life Writing in Papua New Guinea . 13 Jonathan Ritchie 3 . Understanding Solomon . 33 Christopher Chevalier 4 . The ‘Pawa Meri’ Project . 47 Ceridwen Spark 5 . ‘End of a Phase of History’ . 59 Brij V. Lal 6 . Random Thoughts of an Occasional Practitioner . 75 Deryck Scarr 7 . Walking the Line between Anga Fakatonga and Anga Fakapalangi . 87 Areti Metuamate 8. Writing Influential Lives . 99 Nicole Haley 9 . Celebrating My Journey . 111 Sethy Regenvanu 10. Reflections on A Remarkable Journey . 121 Carol Kidu 11 . Solomon Islands’ Biography . 129 Clive Moore 12 . Biographies of Post-1900 New Zealand Prime Ministers . 145 Doug Munro List of Tables Table 1: Biographical works about, or by, Papua New Guineans .......... 29 Table 2: The life and career of Solomon Mamaloni – a synopsis .......... 33 Table 3: Summary of interviews conducted by Christopher Chevalier (to March 2013) .......................................... 42 Table 4: Newspapers and magazines relating to the Solomon Islands ...... 43 Table 5: New Zealand prime ministers (since 1900) and their biographies ...147 Table 6: Edited collections on New Zealand prime ministers .............150 Table 7: Sales figures for political biographies published by Auckland University Press ..........................................165 vii Preface This book emerged from a workshop symposium on political life writing held at The Australian National University (ANU) in October 2012. The inspiration for the workshop came over a cup of tea we shared with Chris Chevalier in the Coombs Tea Room earlier that year where we discussed the practice of life writing and the issues and challenges that one faces while writing political biography. Chris is currently writing a life of Solomon Mamaloni. Some of the themes we explored related to life writing in general; the ambiguous place of the genre within the academy, its ‘great person in history’ tendencies, the relationship between writer and subject, and the big question that faces us all when we produce our manuscripts: what to leave in and out. As we began to dig deeper we also touched on aspects of the life writing art that seemed particularly pertinent to political figures: public perception and ideology, identifying political successes and important policy initiatives, grappling with issues like corruption and age-old political science questions about political leadership and ‘dirty hands’. We also explored the nature of certain source materials: Hansard, political speeches, interviews, and the divergent perspectives offered by supporters and opponents. Some of these themes seemed to be of particular significance in a Pacific context, including patterns of colonisation and the memory of independence, issues elliptically captured by terms like ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’, the nature of ‘self’ presented in Pacific life writing, and the tendency for many of these texts to have been written by ‘outsiders’, or at least the increasingly contested nature of what that term means. With this broad canvas in mind, we sought to bring together, for the first time, a community of scholars writing ‘political lives’ in the Pacific. Specifically, we wanted to explore the practice of life writing according to the people involved: the practitioners. Our aim was to reflect on the experiential side of life writing and to consider what this meant for the texts we produce. The workshop exceeded even our expectations in the quality and range of papers. This collection is the product of that discussion. Not all of the presenters were able to write for this volume but we are nevertheless grateful for their comments and careful suggestions throughout the workshop. In keeping with the conversational nature of the proceedings, we have only very lightly edited the papers so as to preserve the familiar tone. This is, we believe, particularly important given that we hope this volume will be of use to practitioners working outside of the academy and its self-referential vernacular. ix Political Life Writing in the Pacific The invitation to participate in the workshop was open-ended and papers were invited that explored any or all of the themes outlined above in relation to the unique aspects of writing political life history in the Pacific region. The workshop was generously funded by the ANU School of Culture, History and Language’s Research Committee and the School of International, Political and Strategic Studies’ State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Program. We are particularly grateful to James Holman for his assistance with logistics and to Nicholas Halter for editing the manuscript. Jack Corbett and Brij V. Lal Canberra x Contributors Christopher Chevalier is a PhD scholar in the School of Sociology at The Australian National University. Jack Corbett is a Research Fellow on a joint appointment with Griffith University’s Centre for Governance and Public Policy and the Griffith Asia Institute. Nicole Haley is the convenor of The Australian National University’s State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Program. Carol Kidu is a former Minister and Leader of the Opposition in Papua New Guinea. Brij V. Lal is Professor of Pacific and Asian History in the School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, at The Australian National University. Areti Metuamate is a PhD scholar in Pacific Studies at The Australian National University. Clive Moore is Professor of Pacific and Australian History and Head of the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics at the University of Queensland. Doug Munro is a Wellington-based biographer and historian and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Queensland. Sethy Regenvanu is a former Deputy Prime Minister of Vanuatu. Jonathan Ritchie is a Senior Research Fellow at Deakin University’s Alfred Deakin Research Institute. Deryck Scarr is a member of the Emeritus Faculty at The Australian National University. Ceridwen Spark is a Fellow at the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Program at The Australian National University. xi 1. Practising Political Life Writing in the Pacific Jack Corbett … biography is not solely a quest to imagine and transform the other. No. It is also a quest to understand and transform the self through a journey mediated by feeling and self-discovery.1 The state of life writing in the Pacific presents us with something of a paradox. On the one hand, on a country-by-country basis, there seem to be numerous gaps, with academics the primary authors of the few lives that have been written. On the other hand, as Doug Munro has remarked, when taken as a group, the corpus of life writing in the Pacific is one of the most substantial bodies of work about the politics and history of the region.2 Certainly, when it comes to the study of leadership and political leadership in particular, nothing from the mainstream academic disciplines rivals its breadth and depth, which is especially remarkable given that much of this writing is of recent − that is, post-colonial − origin. This point is argued most persuasively by Jonathan Ritchie’s contribution to this volume, which focuses specifically on the state of the life writing art in Papua New Guinea, but it is of more general relevance. Academic and popular commentators in the Pacific regularly observe that politics tends to be heavily personalised, highlighting the ways that governments and coalitions rise and fall on the strength of their leaders. In this context, the individual life takes on added significance than it might elsewhere. Despite this, life writing generally, and life writing about political figures in particular, is a recent development and as such tends not to be based on a wide reading of the available literature. There is comparatively little reflexive analysis about how these texts have been created and what they contribute to mainstream disciplinary approaches. Reflecting this discrepancy, a number of edited collections dedicated to the art of life writing have recently attempted to fill the void. The Stewart and Strathern volume Identity Work: Constructing Pacific Lives addresses several life writing themes of immediate concern to anthropologists and debates about Melanesian

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