Writing Oceania

AN ANALYSIS OF UNCONCEALMENT

In the present paper, I will ana­lyze the char­ac­ter­is­tics and the inner dynam­ics of lit­er­ary texts of Ocea­nia[1]. I’d like to reveal the inner process­es con­struct­ing, struc­tur­ing and orga­niz­ing the intra-tex­tu­al com­plex­i­ty often seen and inter­pret­ed as inher­ent and con­sti­tu­tive­ly a pri­ori. I aim at describ­ing the objec­ti­fi­ca­tion of tex­tu­al ele­ments (Pal­lai, 2010), the emer­gence, hap­pen­ing and becom­ing of texts.

The phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal approach can medi­ate between the pre-giv­en state of tex­tu­al­i­ty and the com­ple­tion or sat­u­ra­tion of the ini­tial open­ness, which is an essen­tial char­ac­ter­is­tic and acces­si­bil­i­ty that pre­pares the birth of a text and enables its pre­sen­tifi­ca­tion[2] and reor­ga­ni­za­tion by read­ers. I use the words “pre­sen­tifi­ca­tion” – “pres­ence” in a dif­fer­ent sense or at least on a dif­fer­ent plane of sig­ni­fi­ca­tion than Hans Ulrich Gum­brecht (2004). The truth in the sense of Ent­ber­gung (reveal­ing), or Unver­bor­gen­heit (uncon­ceal­ment) inevitably needs our under­stand­ing (or accept­ing by active exam­i­na­tion) of the pre-onto­log­i­cal state of pres­ence (Hei­deg­ger, 1933/2001). The embod­i­ment can eas­i­ly be read in terms of per­for­ma­tiv­i­ty (Gum­brecht, 2004). My the­sis is that a denor­mal­iza­tion (crit­i­cal desta­bi­liza­tion) and decom­po­si­tion of our onto-phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal and epis­temic spec­trum is trig­gered by the lit­er­a­ture of the Pacif­ic and the epis­temic dimen­sion of poly-struc­tural­i­ty (White and Ralkows­ki, 2005). The pre-giv­en state of tex­tu­al­i­ty is read here as pro­to-tex­tu­al­i­ty or sub­stance of con­tent, which pre­cedes the actu­al­iza­tion of the text in form of tex­tu­al objects[3] (char­ac­ters, events, points of crys­tal­liza­tion of inter­tex­tu­al rela­tions, etc.).

Gum­brecht describes the typol­o­gy of rela­tions between the sig­ni­fied and its form by using the notions of “sub­stance and form of con­tent”, “sub­stance and form of expres­sion” (Gum­brecht, 2004). I tend to apply sub­stance of con­tent to speak about the pre-noe­mat­ic, and in some cas­es about the meta-inter­pre­ta­tive lev­el of per­cep­tion, cog­ni­tion and onto-phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal experience.

By exam­in­ing the dimen­sions and (micro-)realities of texts, we can describe their nature as mul­ti-poten­tial and sim­i­lar to dynam­ic frac­tal sys­tems. Texts are con­struct­ed tem­porar­i­ly in our men­tal hori­zon and seem to work with reit­er­a­tion and/or mod­i­fi­ca­tion of their ele­ments. Each sen­tence, para­graph, page and chap­ter appears to the mind as man­i­fes­ta­tions of an inten­tion of pre­sen­tifi­ca­tion. Each tex­tu­al object is pro­duced by the sed­i­men­ta­tion and com­plex­i­fi­ca­tion of the text. When focus­ing on this aspect of inter­pre­ta­tion, we need to com­plete our text-based analy­sis with a self-reflex­ive and epis­te­mo­log­i­cal side. We also need to be aware not to focus our atten­tion exclu­sive­ly on the struc­tures of mean­ing, but also on the struc­tures of pres­ence (and spatio-temporality).

When I say pres­ence, I need the sup­port of lit­er­ary texts of regions with an undoubt­ed­ly dif­fer­ent cul­ture of reflec­tion and a much more non-hermeneu­ti­cal­ly and non-onto­log­i­cal­ly ori­ent­ed ten­den­cy of the inter­pre­ta­tion of being and reflex­iv­i­ty: cul­tures and soci­eties of essen­tial­ly dif­fer­ent chrono­topes (Gum­brecht, 2009). I use these texts in order not to fall prey to the allure and temp­ta­tion of occi­den­tal (and espe­cial­ly Euro­cen­tric) philo­soph­i­cal thought. I would under­line (among oth­ers) the sub­stan­ti­a­tion, typol­o­giza­tion and sub­ject-cen­tered cul­ture of epis­te­mo­log­i­cal practice.

SURFACE OF ACTIVATION: DELOCALIZATIONS TOWARDS THE MARGINS

Pres­ence is con­sti­tut­ed by effects of form tak­ing shape in our men­tal hori­zon. To renew our philo­soph­i­cal and lit­er­ary prax­is, we need to see pres­ence in a pre-con­cep­tu­al, but still phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal aspect (in the process of tak­ing shape in our mind). Gum­brecht speaks about pres­ence as a “com­ing forth effac­ing itself and bring­ing itself back” (Gum­brecht, 2004). The being-in-front and the tan­gi­bil­i­ty of ‘prae-esse’ need to have var­i­ous lay­ers of rela­tion­al­i­ty and inten­tion­al­i­ty. A trans­mis­sion and a pro­duc­tive per­me­ation can exist between per­cep­tion and mean­ing attri­bu­tion. The vibra­tion and fluc­tu­a­tion, gen­er­at­ed by the move­ments of cir­cu­lar dis­place­ment between the sur­face of impres­sion and the sur­face of mean­ing attri­bu­tion con­sti­tute the com­plex­i­ty of being. The cer­e­mo­ny of ‘sua’ (pre­sen­ta­tion of an ani­mal or ‘tapa’ cloth to an impor­tant per­son) gen­er­ates and struc­tures a per­cep­tu­al and men­tal space of pres­ence and epiphany. The per­for­ma­tive char­ac­ter of pre­sen­ta­tion belongs to a trans­formed ref­er­en­tial­i­ty, to an intrin­si­cal­ly and extrin­si­cal­ly dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed dimen­sion of pres­ence (Gum­brecht, 2006; For­rai, 1997). Pres­ence is a pos­si­bil­i­ty of forms, an infin­i­ty of con­tentu­al recom­bi­na­tions, an insta­bil­i­ty, a grav­i­ta­tion towards man­i­fes­ta­tion (Der­ri­da, 1972). Pres­ence is being-relat­ed, and thus it can be seen as lim­it-phe­nom­e­na avail­able in lim­it-sit­u­a­tions to our inter­pre­tive con­scious­ness. Pres­ence is the avail­abil­i­ty of a trans­gres­sive men­tal prac­tice, of a spa­tio-tem­po­ral change, a shift in our awareness.

In My Urohs, Emeli­hter Kih­leng presents us a scene of pres­ence, of unstruc­tured imme­di­a­cy of pre-inten­tion­al dynam­ics: “my urohs is an isimwas feast / with over a hun­dred urohs hang­ing / from the rafters of the nahs / sway­ing in the breeze”[4] (Kih­leng, 2008: 49).

We can locate the man­i­fes­ta­tion and the dynam­ic process of pres­ence in the col­lec­tion My Urohs. The water pound­ing the cement (‘Writer’s Block’), the kar­er tree and the pink Bougainvil­lea (‘ABC Ohmine’)[5], the banana on the side of fish and rice (‘Pwihk O’) – even though they may seem sta­t­ic to the per­cep­tion – offer men­tal spaces of intrin­sic move­ment and pre-noet­ic exper­i­men­ta­tion. In the expe­ri­ence of visu­al­iz­ing the ‘urohs’ sway­ing in the breeze, we can seize a pre-mor­pho­log­ic sta­tus in the con­sti­tu­tion of our hori­zon of expe­ri­ences. This involve­ment in the gen­er­at­ing of the basis of our phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal (and lat­er onto­log­i­cal) under­stand­ing works nev­er­the­less on a pre-appre­hen­sive lev­el (Boi et al., 2007). The poet­ry of Kih­leng brings us clos­er to the self-reflex­iv­i­ty and the exam­i­na­tion of the inner con­nect­ed­ness of our per­cep­tions and noe­mat­ic schema­ti­za­tions, clos­er to a tan­gi­ble pres­ence. This is the deic­tic poten­tial­i­ty of epiphany. In the case of the Pacif­ic, the traces of the mul­ti­plic­i­ty and simul­tane­ity of frag­mant­ed domains of pos­si­bil­i­ties can be traced in poet­ry (and oth­er nar­ra­tives of iden­ti­ty). The Pohn­peian Nan Madol (mean­ing spaces inbe­tween) sym­bol­izes the artic­u­la­tion of open­ness as the fun­da­men­tal world hori­zon. The imma­nent sub­jec­tiv­i­ty of poly-dimen­sion­al­i­ty is meta-the­mat­ic as for the con­cep­tu­al­ized (most­ly west­ern) net­works of shapes of mean­ing. I would how­ev­er refrain from using the notion of “pres­ence cul­ture” (Gum­brecht, 2004). The imme­di­a­cy of man­i­fes­ta­tions in the pre-noe­mat­ic state of poly-struc­tural­i­ty can­not be tem­po­r­al­ized in the word “epiphany” as Gum­brecht uses it. Ver­ti­cal and hor­i­zon­tal epis­temic struc­tures present them­selves simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, and pres­ence (read in poet­ry from authors of the Pacif­ic Ocean) does not sed­i­men­tate in a way to cre­ate lay­ers of the­ma­tized (west­ern) exis­tence. This does not exist in deep struc­tures of imme­di­a­cy (‘Lost in focused inten­si­ty’). Pluri-dimen­sion­al thema­ti­za­tions and the com­po­si­tion of a uni­fied per­spec­tive out of geo­graph­i­cal, somat­ic and men­tal insu­lar­i­ty can be seen in the Pe’a (tra­di­tion­al male tat­too – Samoa) (Schwendt­ner, 2000).

            In the poet­ry of Kau­ra­ka Kau­ra­ka, we find the gen­e­sis of seman­tic fields of inter-sub­jec­ti­va­tion and uni­ty. The men­tion­ing of Mani­hi­ki and Maui-Poti­ki[6] (Kau­ra­ka, 1985: 9–13) acti­vate the syn­chron­ic com­po­si­tion­al func­tion of lan­guage estab­lish­ing attached regions of ref­er­en­tial­i­ty to an onto­log­i­cal uni­ty of the Pacif­ic. Havai­ki (ances­tral home­land of the Poly­ne­sians) inscribes into the poem rela­tions con­sti­tut­ing mean­ing. These oper­a­tors of iden­ti­ty descrip­tion work in order to estab­lish an active asso­cia­tive and col­lec­tive hor­i­zon­tal­i­ty of ver­ti­cal seg­ments (to cre­ate uni­ty in dif­fer­ence and one­ness in dif­fer­en­ci­at­ed exten­sions of the present moment). These tex­tu­al ele­ments con­tribute to a uni­fied read­ing of self-tem­po­r­al­iza­tion (Selb­stzei­t­i­gung) and the omni- or all-tem­po­ral­i­ty (Allzeitlichkeit).

Fra­grances, weeds and ‘tihi­ti’[7] are instances of the self-orga­niz­ing map of the world of objects. The spa­tial mor­phol­o­gy of the notions and the men­tal fac­tors involved in the open­ing of the tex­tu­al archi­tec­ture cre­ate inter­re­la­tions between per­son­al expe­ri­ences of being and region­al­ly iso­mor­phic (yet still rad­i­cal­ly het­ero­ge­neous) read­ings of the world expe­ri­ence. The Pacif­ic, in this read­ing, is con­ceived of as a con­cep­tu­al estab­lish­ment oper­at­ing from the exte­ri­or, but hav­ing inter­nal epis­temic uni­ty as well.

            The poet­ic work of Kau­ra­ka offers us trans­gres­sive points of our under­stand­ing of the con­struc­tion of the world, of our pres­ence, being and of our self-orga­ni­za­tion as sys­tems of for­mal iter­a­tion and mod­i­fi­ca­tion (Ire­land and Der­ix, 2003: 1). Being in these poems is a “place of epiphany” with­out explic­it man­i­fes­ta­tion of a reflex­ion on sub­jec­tiv­i­ty (‘A neg­a­tive anthro­pol­o­gy’). The enclosed con­cep­tu­al space of self-objec­ti­va­tion is organ­i­cal­ly attached to the dynam­ic space of the per­cep­tu­al. This enables us to look at the genet­ic mor­phol­o­gy of being as giv­en, to gain access to the ana­lyt­i­cal and crit­i­cal expe­ri­ence of its proces­su­al­i­ty, of its becom­ing. Objects of the per­cep­tu­al dimen­sion serve in Kauraka’s work as elas­tic point­ing index­i­cals[8] towards domains of onto­log­i­cal inten­si­ty. Index­i­cals have fix­point[9] ori­gins in texts, but they are detached and they gain flex­i­bil­i­ty as oper­a­tors of onto­log­i­cal aspects. These texts lend them­selves eas­i­ly to a dynam­ic inter­pre­ta­tion of phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy. In this aspect, I do not focus on tex­tu­al objects in their final­ized or sat­u­rat­ed sta­tus (as they take their final seman­tic, struc­tur­al place and their posi­tion in the net­work of meta‑, inter- and intra-tex­tu­al rela­tions) but on the process of their becom­ing and com­plex­i­fi­ca­tion. In this process, seg­ments of over­lap­ping occur. We need how­ev­er, to cir­cum­scribe this phe­nom­e­non and dis­tin­guish it from the notion of ubiq­ui­ty as Gum­brecht uses it. In present moment (exis­ten­tial) pres­ence as in tex­tu­al pres­ence, this is not an infi­nite avail­abil­i­ty, not a man­u­script of omnipres­ence or all-time avail­abil­i­ty. This applies to tex­tu­al objects in their inter-relat­ed­ness, seg­ments of meta-tex­tu­al­i­ty and per­son­al being (as a con­junc­tion of somat­ic and men­tal components)(Gumbrecht, 2010: 6–9). In this sense, each lit­er­ary pas­sage and text is a site of men­tal (and onto­log­i­cal) delo­cal­iza­tion and poten­tial­i­ty, of fluc­tu­a­tion in our ten­den­tious­ly sta­t­ic dis­course of noe­mat­ic con­tents (Lasserre et al., 2005: 1–5).

Anoth­er way of illus­trat­ing what I would call the hor­i­zon­tif­i­ca­tion of tex­tu­al and onto­log­i­cal expe­ri­ence and inter­pre­ta­tion, is the exam­ple of ele­men­tary mono­mi­als. (When read­ing the Pacif­ic, both in the lit­er­ary and the abstract way, instead of con­ceiv­ing of the text as a set of vari­ables struc­tured and read in a reflex­ive and tem­po­ral way, we need to think of it as ele­ments, sub­sets and sets of poly­no­mi­als pro­ject­ed on what becomes an iden­ti­ty map). Writ­ing (and being as an onto-phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal expe­ri­ence) is thus a map­ping (and iter­a­tion, alter­ation, move­ment) of vari­ables or sequences of vari­ables from infi­nite vir­tu­al sets to ordered com­po­si­tions (Ebrahi­mi et al., 2007: 1–7).

What I pro­pose here is a com­bi­na­to­r­i­al iden­ti­ty con­cept[10], hav­ing the fea­tures of frac­tal dynam­ics. Our ten­den­cy of oper­at­ing struc­tura­tions of def­i­nite sum­ma­tions over infi­nite arrays of indef­i­nite ele­ments can be replaced or recon­cep­tu­al­ized by the unlearn­ing of our habit­u­a­tions and by the delo­cal­iza­tions of our rep­re­sen­ta­tions. As for the expres­sion of the inter­nal epis­temic uni­ty of Poly­ne­sia, we have the word ‘feu­na’ sig­ni­fy­ing both home­land ter­ri­to­ry and pla­cen­ta (Gan­nier, 2005).

            In Hingano, Kon­ai Helu Thaman describes some symp­toms of an iden­ti­ty epi­dem­ic (‘My Blood’), men­tions the turn­ing of the pages of for­eign text books (“Island Fire”), but also the silence and the hid­den secrets of the past (‘Tiare’). The long­ing for a fast canoe and the images of the mir­rored sky func­tion as onto-phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal oper­a­tors (Thaman, 1987: 6, 14, 30): “Pray, give me now a fast canoe / That I may join the fish of the ocean / And togeth­er we will weep / For the works of the night”.

We can pose ques­tions con­cern­ing the hermeneu­tics of fac­tic­i­ty. The desta­bi­liza­tion of our rati­o­ci­na­tive­ly ori­ent­ed pres­ence works by the shift struc­tures of phys­i­cal script­ing (Piras­tu, 1996: 18–36).  The scenes and imagery of pres­ence sub­vert our cat­e­gories and tax­o­nom­ic deter­mi­na­tions inscribed in the west­ern philo­soph­i­cal tradition.

We wit­ness the lib­er­a­tion of the sign, the dis­clo­sure and uncon­ceal­ment of opaque and dense con­cep­tu­al com­plex­i­fi­ca­tions. Texts oper­ate as desta­bi­liz­ing com­po­nents in order to out­line the basic dynam­ics of the dis­clo­sure of our men­tal fix­a­tions: “we weave intri­cate pat­terns / around each oth­er / mak­ing a tapes­try of silent songs / we lis­ten to each other’s dreams / pause then lis­ten again” (Thaman, 1987: 58).

Fac­tic­i­ty and the char­ac­ter­is­tic (inter­pre­ta­tive) oper­a­tions of being are dis­rupt­ed in their phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal­ly and noe­mat­i­cal­ly ori­ent­ed flow. Silence, as a form of exten­sion of dis­course, or rather the inter­ro­ga­tion (dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed polar­i­ty) of the pause cre­ates a space of par­tic­u­lar tem­po­ral­i­ty, a tem­po­ral sin­gu­lar­i­ty. Iden­ti­ty is con­struct­ed by tem­po­ral and non-tem­po­ral instances. When we refer to the con­cep­tu­al sequences of the mind, to the for­mal and con­tentu­al men­tal process­es opposed to the post- and/or pre-struc­tur­al moments of dis­con­ti­nu­ity, silence sig­ni­fies an archi­tec­tur­al hia­tus, or a dif­fer­ent tis­sue of tem­po­ral­i­ty in the par­a­digm where we con­ceive of time assign­ing visu­al units to the proces­su­al­i­ty of con­tentu­al phases.

When tak­ing the con­cept of “chrono­tope” in Gumbrecht’s read­ing, we need to under­line that it exists only in terms of con­ti­nu­ity and trans­gres­sion between con­ti­nu­ities. Chrono­topes are con­struct­ed by spec­trums of units of com­plex­i­ty (sec­ond, minute, hour) relat­ed between their bound­aries and lim­i­ta­tions. Units of silence and the inter­play of seg­ments of non-tem­po­ral­i­ty do not fit into this par­a­digm. There is a need of decat­e­go­riza­tion and recon­sid­er­a­tion of modal­i­ty con­cern­ing the per­for­ma­tive time of men­tal pro­duc­tion to be able to attribute a place to oth­er kinds of tem­po­ral­i­ties. Do domains of non-pro­duc­tive sequen­tial form make time invis­i­ble of inex­is­tent? Can we think of time between units of pro­duc­tion of sig­ni­fi­ca­tion as gen­er­at­ing an absence, or do we only have to let go of our noe­mat­i­cal­ly expro­pri­at­ed under­stand­ing of pres­ence, time and chrono­topes? Can the ‘drama­tis­che Stag­na­tion’ phrased by Gum­brecht be the sig­nal of the inad­e­quate­ness of our chrono­tope which can’t reflect on oth­er kinds of tem­po­ral expe­ri­ences or its own con­cep­tu­al restric­tions and defi­cien­cies? (Gum­brecht, 2007: 3–5; 2010c: 60–64).

            What we see is a dis­so­lu­tion of dyadic oppo­si­tions (con­scious-uncon­scious, inten­tion­al‒non-inten­tion­al com­po­nents of con­scious­ness). The efforts of philo­soph­i­cal thought to ren­der con­tents vis­i­ble and seiz­able to the mind fail at the onto-phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal­ly unsta­ble struc­tures of sig­ni­fi­ca­tion that we find in the poet­ry of the Pacif­ic. There is a sub­ver­sion of inten­tion­al­i­ty, men­tal spa­tial­i­ty and tem­po­ral­i­ty. Iden­ti­ty is not insti­tut­ed, but installed through pres­ence, sat­u­rat­ed by impli­cat­ing dif­fer­en­ti­a­tions and pos­si­bil­i­ties (But­ler, 1993: 7–10). Lit­er­a­ture becomes the frame­work of the resig­ni­fi­ca­tion of the self, of the de-/re-mate­ri­al­iza­tion of the expe­ri­ence. The sys­tem­ati­za­tions and the archi­tec­ture of our con­scious­ness (and of our con­cepts about being) are con­test­ed and desta­bi­lized by the dis­cur­sive excess of pres­ence and indi­vid­ual sin­gu­lar­i­ty appear­ing in a resig­ni­fied temporality.

            The imme­di­a­cy of our rela­tion to our exte­ri­or­i­ty (pre­vi­ous­ly absorbed by abstrac­tions) is restored by the action of being present and attached to mul­ti­ple facets and man­i­fes­ta­tions of real­i­ty: “you and i like waves will be / free to join the sky at sea” (‘Like Waves Will Be’) (Descombes, 1979: 29–36). The deha­bit­u­a­tion of our gnose­o­log­i­cal­ly (relat­ed to the phi­los­o­phy of knowl­edge) and meta­phys­i­cal­ly ori­ent­ed being leads us to a crit­i­cal under­stand­ing of our the­o­ret­ic world-acqui­si­tion, of our apper­cep­tion and com­pre­hen­sion of the tan­gi­ble dimen­sions of the world. Texts can lead us back to the dif­fer­en­tiable nature of the matrix of our per­cep­tion of object­hood and sub­jec­tiv­i­ty. Cer­tain tex­tu­al places are capa­ble of dis­or­ga­niz­ing our seman­tic hori­zon as well as of redefin­ing the axis and met­ric of our con­cep­tu­al­iz­ing activ­i­ty by inter­pre­ta­tive dis­place­ments. Texts, in this read­ing, are emerg­ing mem­branes, or spa­tial den­si­fi­ca­tions of trans­gres­sion, restruc­tur­ing fluc­tu­a­tions dereg­u­lar­iz­ing and trans­form­ing men­tal fix­points. Fix­points denote mon­ic domains and sin­gu­lar points of con­fin­able forms of intel­li­gi­ble struc­ture. The emer­gence and becom­ing of the text can be inter­pret­ed as the dynamiza­tion of tex­tu­al ele­ments by the for­mu­la­tions, approx­i­ma­tions and process­es of the mind. The text appears to the con­scious­ness by its men­tal and cor­po­re­al gen­e­sis (effects of sound hav­ing a phys­i­cal dimen­sion) (Mon­tero, 1987: 154–56).

           Trough and in this poet­ry, we are inscribed in the hori­zon of the intel­li­gi­ble struc­tures of objects and objec­tiv­i­ty. Our rela­tion to the world of objects and pres­ence works on a pre-reflex­ive and supra-tem­po­ral lev­el. A phase tran­si­tion oper­ates by tex­tu­al­i­ty, which inter­rupts the noet­ic flow and installs a trans­formed rela­tion­al­i­ty to hylet­ic con­tents (sen­su­ous con­tents of the deter­mi­na­tion of an object). We need to reex­am­ine our cog­ni­tive and epis­te­mo­log­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion in rela­tion to tex­tu­al­i­ty (Toronyai, 2001: 1–10). The world of objects and of pres­ence (exempt from men­tal over-deter­mi­na­tion) is pre­sent­ed to us as a set of com­plex and struc­tured enti­ties present in our inten­tive process­es pre­ex­ist­ing for­mal onto­log­i­cal expres­sions and cat­e­go­riza­tions and not admit­ting voli­tion­al and con­cep­tu­al reductions.

Entropy and anisotropy as fields of phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal rescal­ing: an ontol­ogy of immediacy

The ana­lyzed poet­ic works sketch a mul­ti-posi­tion­al approach, where we expe­ri­ence a fric­tion in the noe­mat­ic sub­strate per­formed in order to renew our ways of objec­ti­va­tion and the opac­i­ty of our pres­ence-ori­ent­ed being. Scenes and objects pre­sent­ed in these poems appear to be non-con­tin­gent. The sin­gu­lar points of their pres­ence sug­gest that their being is opta­tive, but their tem­po­ral career posits them as being of non-chang­ing char­ac­ter. Scenes, descrip­tions and objects are super-tex­tu­al­ly inter­con­nect­ed and strat­i­fied in their rela­tion­al­i­ty posit­ing them­selves in the form of objec­ti­vat­ed objects with inten­tion­al but intu­itive-nat­ur­al pres­ence. They estab­lish the meta-phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal con­tin­u­um func­tion­ing as a con­tex­tu­al instru­ment and a the­mat­ic field to cre­ate moments of digres­sion and entropy. There­by, the onto­log­i­cal struc­ture of enti­ties is re-pre­sent­ed, and the imma­nent dynam­ics and fluc­tu­a­tions of lit­er­ary texts out­line a con­tin­u­um-based approach of meta­physics and onto-phenomenology.

            Mak­iu­ti Ton­gia evokes the Avatiu stream and the gua­va trees (‘I Remem­ber’) and Avai­ki[11] (‘Out­cast’). ’Ora’, mean­ing liv­ing time, is more close­ly relat­ed to the proces­su­al com­po­si­tion of the inter­nal archi­tec­ture of phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy than to the noe­mat­ic con­tents of con­scious­ness. Scenes of descrip­tion gen­er­ate sequences of oper­a­tors occur­ring at suc­ces­sive instants in the text (Omnès and San­gal­li, 1999: 163–79).  The changes that rede­fine rela­tions to the ‘marae’, ‘kikau hous­es’, ‘umu’ and ‘kai’[12] belong to the epis­te­mo­log­i­cal­ly and inten­tion­al­ly con­di­tioned and for­mal­ized tem­po­ral­i­ty, but cer­tain com­po­nents of the ‘ora’ gen­er­ate sta­tion­ary and mov­able states of a pro­to-tem­po­ral­i­ty and intu­itive topology.

            In Ruper­ake Petaia’s poet­ry, a depart­ment store (‘Blue Rain’), a mar­ket place, an ‘oso’ or a ‘tia­pu­la’ (‘Change’) can take this func­tion (Peta­ia, 1980: 1, 5)[13]. The tex­tu­al body is instru­men­tal in installing a mere­o­log­i­cal bridge between the spa­tial­i­ty of the per­cep­tu­al (phe­nom­e­na of sim­ple men­tal con­struc­tion) and the eidet­ic (in the sense of plas­tic given­ness in thought) (Fazekas, 2004).

            The pres­ence fac­tor of being, fixed in lit­er­ary texts, con­tributes to a remap­ping of our onto­log­i­cal mor­phol­o­gy. These poems allow us to rede­fine the con­ti­nu­ity and char­ac­ter­is­tics of our phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal inter­pre­ta­tion, and enable us to per­ceive a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the state space of pos­si­bil­i­ties in the sub­stan­tial­ly mul­ti-dimen­sion­al real­i­ty of the Pacif­ic tak­ing shape. The sub­strate of our epis­te­mo­log­i­cal schemes and the gnose­o­log­ic com­po­nents of our onto­log­i­cal con­scious­ness oper­ate by per­cep­tu­al-genet­ic dimen­sions of the objec­tu­al imme­di­a­cy, imma­nent in this poet­ry. Instead of an inter­pre­ta­tive stress on voli­tion­al struc­tures, trans­for­ma­tive tex­tu­al com­po­nents func­tion as attrac­tors in a pro­pri­o­cep­tive dis­course of a rede­fined ontology.

EXTEROCEPTION AND TRANSPARENCY IN A PHENOMENOLOGY OF IMMEDIATE GIVENNESS

We see in this writ­ing the con­tours of the con­tin­gent super­struc­ture of a pro­to-epis­temic real­i­ty. Descrip­tions define a space of insta­bil­i­ty, where mon­ic ten­den­cies of for­mal­iza­tion and meta­phys­i­cal mean­ing attri­bu­tion are delo­cal­ized from their reg­u­la­to­ry dis­cur­sive cen­ter: “Most of the world’s space is mine / Liv­ing crea­tures live and enjoy / They hide with­in my immense bel­ly / Their home for the bet­ter / and for the worse.” (Kolia, 1988: 55).

The ego­log­i­cal struc­ture in this pas­sage of Fepai Kolia is part of the seman­tics of the exten­sion of inte­ro­cep­tion by an osten­si­ble def­i­n­i­tion of an inter-sub­jec­tive social space. This is the real­iza­tion of a trans­gres­sion of lim­i­ta­tive sets of ontolo­gies and the emer­gence of poly-per­spec­tive pos­si­bil­i­ties of thema­ti­za­tion and con­cep­tu­al sed­i­men­ta­tion. The switch to macro-phe­nom­e­na (com­pared to the intrin­sic com­po­nents) entails enti­ties that are artic­u­lat­ed as domains of poten­tial­i­ty (on a con­cep­tu­al lev­el) and take part in the cre­ation of spaces of self-expro­pri­a­tion and prax­i­o­log­i­cal analy­sis (exam­in­ing men­tal-psy­cho­log­i­cal and kine­si­o­log­i­cal com­po­nents of action).

The syn­er­gy of spa­tial, tem­po­ral and men­tal fac­tors seems to result from an inher­ent super­po­si­tion­al (over­lap of enti­ties) matrix and it explic­i­tates the need of a reac­tu­al­iza­tion and for­mal descrip­tion of an onto-phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal and exis­ten­tial hermeneu­tics (Leonzi, 2009: 79–84). The epis­temic instru­ments serve the explic­i­ta­tion of con­cep­tu­al struc­tures and of the deriva­tion­al mech­a­nisms of the for­mal­iza­tion of ontolo­gies. If we do not gen­er­al­ize and homog­e­nize, but we take the instances of sin­gu­lar rep­re­sen­ta­tions of enti­ties (in the present case be it onto­log­i­cal) sep­a­rate­ly, we can speak of a phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal history/histories of for­mal sys­tems. In this sense, I use the plur­al form of the word: “Dream­ing of a bright tomor­row for tomor­row / My tomor­row for tomor­row still / shap­ing up” (‘Tomor­row for Tomor­row’). The mul­ti-dimen­sion­al and poly-struc­tur­al Ocea­nia dynamizes the­o­ret­i­cal state spaces, insti­tut­ing there­by new pos­si­ble states of knowl­edge and onto-epis­temic rescal­ing (Bokulich and Jaeger, 2010: 189–204). In ‘Lost Real­i­ty’, the ‘sua’ cer­e­mo­ny appears as an axi­o­log­i­cal (study of val­ue-ori­ent­ed con­tents) fac­tor of actu­al­i­ty. Its cen­tral posi­tion endures a con­sid­er­able loss of impor­tance. The telos seems con­tin­gent and the com­plex­i­ty of the tra­di­tion­al men­tal space is enfee­bled: “My sua was pre­sent­ed. / … / One per­cent native cul­ture. / Nine­ty­nine per­cent alter­ations / … / A sym­bol only / A min­gle of cul­tures / A mess of ide­olo­gies / A lost reality”(‘Lost Reality’). 

RECENTERING THE LIMINAL: POLARISATIONS OF ONTOLOGY AND PATTERNS OF INSTABILITY

Insta­bil­i­ty is read here as a mul­ti­plic­i­ty-state of dif­fer­en­tiable notion­al nuclei, sus­cep­ti­ble of gen­er­at­ing trans­for­ma­tion­al shifts reshap­ing our onto-epis­temic con­fig­u­ra­tions. There is a spec­trum of query in the becom­ing of the struc­tures of the self in the epis­teme of Ocea­nia. We need to see that the exter­nal­ly rhetori­cized des­ig­na­tion of Pacif­ic Rim is mere­ly a pseu­do-real­i­ty, a con­fin­ing des­ig­na­tion cre­at­ing a sur­face of pas­si­va­tion to cov­er (among oth­ers) con­sid­er­able parts of South-East Asia and Ocea­nia (Dir­lik, 1998: 15–20, 53–65). This inho­mo­ge­neous gnose­o­log­i­cal vac­u­um ren­ders more dif­fi­cult the def­i­n­i­tion of an open-end­ed, dynam­ic men­tal space (Spinel­li, 2005: 92–113).

            The nam­ing of the self is an ontic real­iza­tion, an auto-poiesis, an estab­lish­ment or con­sci­en­ti­za­tion of a spec­trum of coher­ence in self-def­i­n­i­tion: “the tale i tell is my own / theirsy­ours / a way of seek­ing some more / of Sāmoa / of my sacred cen­tre / … / time­less mys­ter­ies / … / spaces of silence / telling lives” (Marsh, 2004). The flex­i­bil­i­ty, resid­ing in the space of appear­ance and emer­gence of (owned) self-con­structs, affects the scope of the poten­tial space of self-approx­i­ma­tion by hybridiza­tion and overlaps. 

            Tex­tu­al onto-gen­e­sis can be locat­ed in tex­tu­al instances that hyposta­size moments of self-def­i­n­i­tion and exe­cutes process­es of men­tal enti­ties and dis­po­si­tions defin­ing iden­ti­ty: “She wants answers / what-whom-where” (Aus­trai-Kai­lo, 2004),  “Every­one eats up to their elbows / … / Bring us a bowl of water / a cloth / to wash our hands.” (Avia, 2002), “Where is the Ni-Van­u­atu girl? / … / lis­ten­ing to dekudeku­ni / weav­ing bas­kets and mats / … / Play­ing the kuruku­ru duele / singing tutu tutu gwao / sit­ting qui­et­ly on a mat”[14] (Aru, 2004).

            In my read­ing, the recon­sid­er­a­tion of self-con­structs is a tex­tu­al event in its writ­ten man­i­fes­ta­tion, and sin­gu­lar points (in this onto-proces­su­al approach) are tex­tu­al objects. Their emer­gence cre­ates sub-sets and sets of ontic man­i­fes­ta­tion, and by means of this mere­o­log­i­cal sys­tem[15] (rela­tions of parts and wholes) a tran­sub­stan­ti­a­tion (onto-tex­tu­al­i­ty: text – being) oper­ates and attrib­ut­es exis­ten­tial cor­pus and mean­ing to the index­i­cal devices (tex­tu­al objects) of the text. The nar­ra­tive pro­to­cols are there­by by-passed by the very (onto-epis­te­mo-genet­i­cal) nature of tex­tu­al­i­ty (Hereniko and Wil­son, 1999: 1–9, 381–85).

TRANSITIONS, TEXTUAL RETENTIVITY OF IDENTITY PATTERNS

            When we try to get to a con­clu­sion, we need to see, that the struc­tur­al and process-based analy­sis of our lives (and its man­i­fes­ta­tions in/through lit­er­ary texts) can take the shape of a dox­as­tic, epis­te­mo­log­i­cal approach. These approx­i­ma­tions, how­ev­er, are not coex­ten­sive with the inher­ent, exis­ten­tial­ly ori­ent­ed tex­tu­al domains. Tex­tu­al objects func­tion as para­me­ters of bind­ing, cre­at­ing the attach­ment between tex­tu­al oper­a­tors and the spec­trum of exis­ten­tial­ly-based man­i­fes­ta­tions of being (Rah­man, 2009: 274–281). There­by, the text is read as a set of pos­si­ble pro­jec­tors serv­ing as gen­er­at­ing points of a con­tin­u­um of sin­gu­lar instances of instan­ti­a­tion. The text is the index­i­cal sub­set of pos­si­ble exis­ten­tial val­ues[16], shaped by man­i­fes­ta­tion, point­ed to by tex­tu­al objects: “By your own seeds unknown, / … / Life­less, help­less, cru­el­ly defaced. / … / The sands of Point Cruz trem­bled, / The palms of Nuka­pu blood­ed” (Habu, 1975).

            In the poet­ry of Kon­ai Helu Thaman, we can seize the nature of the ori­en­ta­tion of focal objects (tex­tu­al index­i­cals) and the field of man­i­fes­ta­tion (evo­lu­tion of onto-phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal pos­si­bil­i­ties): “So come with me sis­ter / Let’s take a chance and make the break / After all, we can­not all go back / To the land.” (Thaman, 2000: 6). In lit­er­ary texts of the ocean­ic imag­i­nary, we find mul­ti­plica­tives and recom­bi­na­tions, delin­eariza­tions of con­fin­ing con­cep­tu­al­i­ty and the emer­gence of extend­ing epis­te­molo­gies (Sub­ra­mani, 2006: 1–9; 1999: 1–3): “per­haps the ground / made it pos­si­ble to live / among the trees / … / lives lived under / clear skies defy / the fla­vor of storms” (‘Liv­ing Among the Trees’), “today it rained and rained / as if it’s nev­er rained before / as if the rain / was leav­ing its cage / open­ing to the world / through the tears / of the sky” (‘Tan­go-I-One­hoko’) (Thaman, 1993: 9, 13).

            We also need to reflect on the con­di­tion­ing of space as a men­tal con­struc­tion and the vec­tors of our hermeneu­ti­cal inter­pre­ta­tion of the sub­stance of the epis­teme of the ocean. Frac­tur­ing mod­els of lin­ear, dis­crete under­stand­ing can­not pre­serve and inte­grate the com­plex­i­ty and intrin­sic mobil­i­ty of the ocean­ic epis­te­mo­log­i­cal con­tin­u­um[17] (Mey­er, 2001: 1–3). In ‘Ōle­lo Hawai’I’ ‘ho’omaopopo’ means to under­stand, rec­og­nize, com­pre­hend, but also to iden­ti­fy and con­ceive. In the gnose­ol­o­gy and ent­elechy present in (or invoked by) lit­er­ary texts of ocean­ic regions[18], we can see actu­al­iza­tions of dynam­i­cal onto­log­i­cal dis­po­si­tions (Can­na­vo, 2009: 9–14). The lit­er­ary field (or spec­trum of mul­ti­tudes) of Ocea­nia com­pre­hends an imma­nent vari­able actu­at­ing an open-end­ed ent­elechy and a facil­i­ta­tive mod­u­la­tion in the struc­ture of our per­cep­tion and men­tal oper­a­tion (Bell, 2004: 1–4).

            The men­tal spa­tial­i­ty of Ocea­nia is an affir­ma­tive pecu­liar­i­ty of arch­i­pel­ag­ic regions in the Pacif­ic (e.g. Melane­sia): the tex­tu­al instances of iden­ti­ty func­tion as oper­a­tive point­ers sat­u­rat­ing pos­si­ble loops of inter­con­nec­tion between scripts of real­i­ty (phase of tex­tu­al­i­ty) and onto-epis­temic/­cor­po­re­al man­i­fes­ta­tions of flex­i­ble (con­cep­tu­al dimen­sion) or tan­gi­ble form (phys­i­cal dimen­sion) (phase of instantiation).

The instan­ti­at­ing move­ments of tex­tu­al state vec­tors cre­ate open-bound­ary con­di­tions of an epoche of hermeneu­ti­cal resig­ni­fi­ca­tion: “half-flown moons / and cir­cling half plan­ets / deep in the con­cen­tric cir­cles / of my tor­ment­ed con­science / … / the fiji times lies crum­pled / … / and there is an uneasy / feel­ing of uncer­tain­ty” (Mati, 1980), “for­ag­ing the com­mon refuse / for a cane­field and a wood­en house / … / you clear the clog of cam­phor / from your nasal pas­sages / breath­ing gen­tly from mem­o­ry to mem­o­ry.” (Mishra, 1995), “Samoans had tak­en the sea’s friend­ship for grant­ed / … / Free phone calls to Samoa (But only one Samoa)/ … / Solomon says / Viti says / Niue says” (Teai­wa, 2010).

            We can read the hyposta­sis of a spa­tio-tem­po­ral delo­cal­iza­tion of our leg­i­bil­i­ty of onto-phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal process­es of trans­fer and trans­la­tion (Tymie­niec­ka, 2009: 312–17): “Van­u­atu / our land / in per­pe­tu­ity / our peo­ple re-born / for eter­ni­ty. / … / Vanaaku Van­u­atu.” (Molisa, 1983: 7). The epis­teme of Ocea­nia does not only have a region­al uni­ty in terms of iden­ti­ty and nar­ra­tive dis­course, but also rep­re­sents a pro­duc­tive phase space[19] of gnose­o­log­i­cal, exis­ten­tial and onto-phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal reshap­ing, of a fun­da­men­tal philo­soph­i­cal repo­lar­iza­tion (Sub­ra­mani, 1992: 83–90; Hau’ofa, 2008: 41–44): “Ocea­nia is vast, Ocea­nia is expand­ing, Ocea­nia is hos­pitable and gen­er­ous, Ocea­nia is human­i­ty ris­ing from the depths of brine and regions of fire deep­er still, Ocea­nia is us. We are the sea, we are the ocean” (Hau’ofa, 2008: 39).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my grat­i­tude to my dis­ser­ta­tion super­vi­sor, Dr. Réka Tóth (ELTE BTK) for her advice and help. I have also ben­e­fit­ed from dis­cussing this work with Prof. Dr. János Polónyi (Uni­ver­si­ty of Stras­bourg), Prof. Dr. Géza Kál­lay (ELTE BTK) and Dr. Vik­tor Malárics. I’m also thank­ful for the obser­va­tions of Dr. Eliz­a­beth DeLoughrey (UCLA). This arti­cle could not have been writ­ten with­out the finan­cial sup­port of the research grant TÁMOP‑4.2.2/B‑10/1–2010-0030/1.4 (Ten­den­cies of changes of lin­guis­tic and cul­tur­al identities).

© Károly Sán­dor Pallai

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