Beyond the Horizon? Nationalisms, Feminisms, and Globalization in the Pacific

This paper situates the fraught relation of nationalisms and feminisms in the context of wider debates about globalization in the Pacific. Through a reading of the poetry and prose of the late Grace Mera Molisa of Vanuatu and Haunani-Kay Trask of Hawai`i, it raises questions about what might be considered “indigenous” and “foreign” in their different locations. Over several decades of intensive and reflective political practice, their respective positions on the relation between nationalisms and feminisms took divergent trajectories. Yet their corpus of poetry, written primarily in English, raises similar questions about what has been described by Wilson and Hereniko as the “inside-out” cultural politics of the contemporary Pacific.