SPEAKING OF COUPS BEFORE THEY HAPPEN: KADAVU, MAY-JUNE 1999

Authors

Matt Tomlinson, Bowdoin CollegeFollow

Abstract

This essay is an examination of discourse I heard in Kadavu Island, Fiji, immediately after the national elections of May 1999. The election results were distressing to many Kadavuans and propelled the circulation of explicitly political discourse. I examine two related phenomena. First, I consider how Methodists' uses of the Bible did not change during the period of coup discourse circulation. In other words, counterintuitively (and contrary to some themes in the literature on Fiji), political talk of Fijian aboriginality did not increase the citation of Old Testament books with their themes of rightful homelands. This suggests that certain forms of Methodist discourse remained independent of and relatively unaffected by political events. Second, I describe a joking debate at a kava-drinking session through which people of Tavuki village partly reconciled themselves to the election results. Such reconciliation, however, was an emergent fact of a generic practice, and although it changed the tone of political discourse Circulating locally, it did not achieve wider political results.

Recommended Citation

Tomlinson, Matt (2002) "SPEAKING OF COUPS BEFORE THEY HAPPEN: KADAVU, MAY-JUNE 1999," Pacific Studies Journal: Vol. 25: No. 3, Article 2.
Available at: https://digitalcollections.byuh.edu/pacific-studies-journal/vol25/iss3/2