Torika Bolatagici - Export Quality ^ Representing Fijian Bodies and the Economy of War - Asia...

8/3/2019 Torika Bolatagici - Export Quality ^ Representing Fijian Bodies and the Economy of War - Asia Pacific Viewpoint - April 2011

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Export quality: Representing Fijian bodies and the

economy of warapv_1438 5..16

Torika Bolatagici College of Fine Arts, University of NSW, New South Wales, and School of Communication and Creative Arts, Faculty of

Arts and Education, Deakin University, Victoria, Australia.Email: [email protected]

Abstract: Fijian bodies have become a valuable commodity in the economy of war. Remittancesfrom workers overseas are Fiji’s largest income – exceeding that of tourism and sugar export. Thisessay examines historical and contemporary representations of the black male body that perpetuatethe exploitation of Fijians by inscribing the Fijian male body as warrior, criminal and protector. Takinga multidisciplinary approach informed by sociology, cultural theory, Pacific studies, visual culture,feminist and post-colonial theory, my practice is the vehicle through which I address issues of neocolonial commodification of Fijian bodies. Through an analysis of my own staged photographsand vernacular images taken by Fijians working for private security military companies and Britishand US armies, I hope to challenge audiences to consider their own perceptions of Fijian agency and subjectivity. By theorising the politicisation of the black body and interrogating colonial representa-tions of blackness, I argue that we can begin to create links between the historical and contemporaryexploitation of Fijians and that at the essence of both is an underlying racial hierarchy and economicrequirement for cheap and, arguably, expendable labour.

Keywords: contemporary photography, Fiji , masculinity, militarism, Pacific, private security

military company

Introduction

Tracing the pre-contact history of militarism inFiji, Halapua described the bati in Fijian cultureas ‘[w]arriors [who] were set apart and calledto action when their services were needed’(Halapua, 2003: 46). Halapua went on to makethe connection between this form of pre-contact

militarism and colonial war efforts in whichFijians fought for foreign armies in both WorldWars. Between 1957 and 1958, the BritishArmy recruited young Fijian soldiers to workalongside British and New Zealand soldiersin Britain’s nine atmospheric nuclear tests atChristmas Island and Malden Island. Since1978, the Royal Fiji Military Forces havedeployed as United Nations peacekeepers inLebanon and Sinai. While there has been someresearch into Fijian masculinity in relation topolitical coups, warrior culture and militarisa-tion over the last decade, there is an absence of critical discussion about the ongoing colonisa-tion of Fijian male bodies.

This essay examines historical and contempo-rary representations of the black male body thatperpetuate the exploitation of Fijians by inscrib-ing the Fijian male body as warrior, athlete,criminal and protector. In this essay, my photo-graphic images and installations are the vehiclefor addressing what I perceive as the ongoingneocolonial commodification of Fijian bodies.

I begin to lay the historical groundwork formy research and art practice by considering theparticipation of Fijian men in the British nucleartests at Christmas Island and Malden Island inthe 1950s. The tests were a devastating exampleof colonial enterprise and left a significantimpact on the health and well-being of the testveterans and their families. I then move to themore contemporary phenomenon of privatesecurity military recruitment in Fiji and ask if itis possible for Fijians to claim agency over therepresentation of the Fijian male body. To illus-trate this notion of agency, I look at images fromthe now-defunct social networking website –Sotia Central .

Asia Pacific Viewpoint, Vol. 52, No. 1, April 2011ISSN 1360-7456, pp5–16

© 2011 The AuthorAsia Pacific Viewpoint © 2011 Victoria University of Wellington

doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8373.2011.01438.x



I conclude by analysing more universalaspects of black embodiment and how theymight apply to the Fijian male body in a globa-lised economy of war. I argue that the Fijianmale has been reduced to the corporeal in ablack body/white body dichotomy that deniesFijian men a spiritual aspect to their existenceand justifies the ongoing project of colonialenterprise that relies on the exploitation of cheap labour. While the issues surroundingrepresentations of the ‘black body’ discussedherein might share commonalities with repre-sentations of other Pacific Islander males,my research speaks specifically of the Fijianexperience.

My multidisciplinary approach is informedby sociology; cultural theory; Pacific studies;visual culture, feminist and post-colonial theory.Although I use the description ‘black body’ as acollective term to encompass bodies that arenon-white – I do not subscribe to an essentialistnotion of race. My perspective is informed by thecritical writing of post-colonial and feministtheorists including bell hooks (1992), SusanBordo (2002), Radhika Mohanram (1999) and

Judith Butler (2009).

Over the past 10 years, my photographicpractice has been primarily concerned withidentity, specifically mixed-race identity andrepresentations of gender and the body. As akailoma woman (of mixed Fijian and Europeanancestry) who was born and raised in Australia,exploring my Fijian heritage has been theimpetus for much of my work. My visual artpractice tends to emerge from a post-colonialfeminist perspective that seeks to expand ideasaround our understanding of black subjectivity

and challenge mainstream representations of black embodiment.

Recently, I have shifted away from autobio-graphical themes to tackle global issues such asthe privatisation of war and the impact that thishas on communities in Fiji. That said, matters of Fijian masculinity and security have a personalresonance with me as my father was a securityguard at a Sydney nightclub for many years,my cousin–brother in Suva is a security guardand another cousin in Suva had completed thepaperwork to apply for work in Iraq beforechanging his mind. I also have other Melanesianfamily members who have been, or are still,members of the Australian Defence Force. So

the links between security and military employ-ment and the Fijian males in my family rundeep. These personal links are referred to in theself-portrait Protect Me (Fig. 1) in which a FijiMilitary Forces badge is pictured clenchedbetween teeth.

As a visual artist, I feel compelled to respondto the world around me, and I believe that artistsare in a unique position to employ a visuallanguage that can speak to audiences in differ-ent ways to text – an evocative visual languagethat can elicit an emotional response and some-times raises more questions than necessarilyproviding answers.

Nuclear tests and primitive bodies

The works Another Sun (Fig. 2), My Water(Inside/Out) (Fig. 3) and My Air (Outside/In)(Fig. 4) were inspired by the book Kirisimasi

(Tubanavau-Salabula et al ., 1999), which waspublished by the Pacific Concerns ResourceCentre. The harrowing collection is composedof the Fijian veterans’ recollections of theirexperiences of the tests. Contained within theiraccounts are references to the ongoing healthissues that many of them and their familiescontinue to suffer, including documented birthdefects among their children, their partners’multiple miscarriages, their own infertility, skinconditions and leukaemia for which they havenot been compensated. While the devastatingexperience and legacy of nuclear testing in thePacific is shared among the indigenous popula-tions of Kiribati, French Polynesia and Marshall

Figure 1. Protect Me, Torika Bolatagici, 2009, digitalchromogenic print on Flex, 50.8 ¥ 40.6 cm

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Islands, this paper is based on the Fijian testi-mony of Operation Grapple.

One particular testimonial that resonatedwith me was that of Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau,one of Fiji’s first Oxford graduates, a chiefly,military and political leader who visited MaldenIsland in May 1957. Fiji Naval Commander StanBrown accompanied Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau:

[l]ater Brown and Ratu Penaia were takenashore to Malden Island to check the radioactivity. They were given rubber boots toprotect their feet but the Navy couldn’t find apair large enough for Ratu Penaia’s feet. So hewent without. ‘It was rather frightening asbushes were still smoldering,’ Brown com-ments . . . [f]rom Malden they were flown backto Christmas Island where Ratu Penaia’s feet

were found to be ‘very hot’ (Tubanavau-Salabula et al ., 1999: 36).

Minimal protection for Fijian and British sol-dier’s bodies was provided, and many of the

veterans recall wearing their daily work clothesduring the tests. Others were given white clothsuits and elbow length gloves and boots toprotect them from burns. All were instructed toturn their backs to the blast and cover their eyes.After the explosion, they were allowed to turnaround and view the cloud (e.g. Tubanavau-

Salabula et al ., 1999).The use of the grid in My Water (Inside/

Out) and My Air (Outside/In) refers to thenames of the tests during Operation Grapple(Grapple X, Grapple Y and Grapple Z) andsymbolises lines of axis. The figure in eachimage looms large over the representations of land and water, and there is disparity in scaleand relationship between the two elements.The frame is disrupted further by the presenceof a black square in each of the corners sug-gesting incompleteness, emptiness or perhaps,concealment. The titles refer to the externaland internal damage that the British andFijian veterans were subjected to through

Figure 2. Another Sun, Torika Bolatagici, 2007, digital print on 100% cotton rag. Dimensions variable

Figure 3. My Water (Inside/Out), Torika Bolatagici,2009, digital print on 100% cotton rag, 60 ¥ 60 cm

Figure 4. My Air (Outside/In), Torika Bolatagici, 2009,digital print on 100% cotton rag, 60 ¥ 60 cm

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British, Australian and New Zealand armies aswell as members of United Nations peacekeep-ing efforts around the globe (Judd, 2006: 26).The working group reported that ‘[a]t the time of the visit, 21 Fijians had reportedly been killedwhile working for PSMCs in Iraq, with severalothers injured’ (Human Rights Council, 2008:14).

The report from the Human Rights Councilindicates an acknowledgement of the problem-atic employment conditions encountered byFijians working for PSMCs. However, historyand contemporary politics of race and repre-sentation when coupled with a war economythat relies on cheap labour tend to suggest a

devaluing of the lives and deaths of blackbodies. This, combined with the economicvulnerability of the Pacific region, has led to acontemporary problem in which Fijian bodieshave become increasingly commodified. Secu-rity work now brings in more money thantourism, sugar or clothing production. Journal-ist Frank Gaglioti (2006) has observed that des-perate former soldiers are ‘eager to exploit alucrative export commodity [and] see no wayout except to put their own lives on the line

in Iraq’. Former Fijian Prime Minister LaiseniaQarase explained in a 2006 interview that‘remittances from residents of Fiji, or citizens of Fiji who have gone abroad, has become thesecond-largest foreign exchange earner for thecountry’ (Vatiskopoulos, 2006).

The economy of war, in which the recruit-ment of cheap Pacific labour is relativelyunregulated, means that the Fijian male hasentered a global market in which his bodyis now subject to colonial and neocolonial

racist stereotypes that have been perpetu-ated through images and have contributed tothe oppression of black people collectively(see Golden, 1994; Willis, 1994; Hooks, 1995;Doy, 2000; Creed and Hoorn, 2001; Fuscoand Wallis, 2003; Jackson, 2010). Further-more, the specificity of private security workmeans that the Fijian male body becomes partof a global economy and loses much of itsagency outside the structures of indigenousFijian culture. In a sense, the Fijian body isstripped bare and re-inscribed with notions of an essential universal ‘blackness’.

One might wonder why PMSC recruitment isproblematic since it provides employment and

travel opportunities for Fijians in a countrywhere unemployment increased 4.9% between1996 and 2007 (Fiji Islands Bureau of Statistics,2009: 2). However, as we have seen, it hasproven to be extremely dangerous work and thebenefits comes at a high cost. Anecdotally,families have been known to encourage theirloved ones to apply for this work with theknowledge that if they are killed, they willreceive a significant payout. Also, there are thewell-documented recruiters who have beencharging large application fees without follow-ing through with employment (SBS Dateline,2005). The conditions of such recruitment arehighly problematic and we are only beginning

to see the effects of post-traumatic stress disor-der and other repercussions of service in a warzone, such as domestic violence, substanceabuse, depression and sexually transmitted dis-eases. The 2008 Report of the Working Groupof the Use of Mercenaries as a Means of Violating Human Rights Impeding the Exerciseof the Right of Peoples to Self-Determinationnoted that Fijian ‘NGO representativesinformed the Working Group that no counsel-ling is available and that there are no debrief-

ings with trained psychologists’ (p. 15). Whilethe Fiji Military Forces provide counselling forits own employees, civilians who return fromwork with PSMCs need to seek out their ownsupport through mental health services such asthe Psychiatric Survivors Association or thePacific Centre for Peace Building (PCPB). ThePCPB offers a wide range of services includingcounselling, mediation and training speci-fically around raising awareness of conflictanalysis and trauma healing (Pacific Centre for

Peacebuilding: 8).So, defined as valuable commodities in the

economy of war, how do Fijian security workersand soldiers exercise their agency and lay claimto their own bodies? In the following sections, Iwill take a closer look at this notion of com-modification and vulnerability of black bodiesand how this has been addressed in my ownimagery and that of other contemporary artists.

Expendable flesh: The commodificationof Fijian bodies

Responding to the brutal police slaying of Guinean immigrant, Amadou Diallo in New

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York in 1999, multidisciplinary artist MendiObadike (2000) recalled ‘I knew, intellectually,that I had to work against the notion that blackpeople were expendable’. In the online workMy Hands/Wishful Thinking (2000), Obadikepresented us with 41 ‘thoughts’ to counter the41 shots that were fired at the unarmed Diallo,who was killed for reaching into his pocket forhis wallet – the police mistaking it for a weapon.The final thought, no. 41 read ‘your back, openand gorgeous, is dark in a doorway and not atarget’.

I was thinking of this work when I created theseries Expendable Flesh (Fig. 5). In this series, wesee a bare black torso with a target superimposed

onto the chest. The colours red, white and blueare symbolic of the flags of colonial powers andthe countries that continue to recruit Fijianlabour: Britain and the USA. The black body isdepicted as bare and vulnerable, unidentifiableand reduced to the corporeal, as it has been forso many centuries. In creating the work, I knewthat I wanted the images to be startling andstriking. However, I have been forced to recon-sider the didactic nature of such imagery in lightof Jackson’s cautionary reminder:

[t]hese contemporary images of suffering blackmale bodies can potentially confirm the integ-rity of the viewer’s white body, by seeminglygiving them power over that body. Indeed, theless the viewer identifies with the vulnerabilityof that body, the more likely the viewer is topresume power over that body (Jackson,2010:57).

In 2009, I began to move away from presenting

the black body as the bare, central feature of mywork as my reading shifted towards theories of whiteness.

Spirit of enterprise: Black corporeality/white spirit

Richard Dyer’s (1997) extensive work about‘whiteness’ provides a useful explanation of the

cultural and historical basis to the positioningof the white body as more than corporeal andthe ways in which the white body has beenprivileged in relation to the black body. Thisnotion sets up a distinction between blackbodies (considered corporeal and ‘of the flesh’)and white bodies (which embody a metaphysi-cal existence).

Dyer explained, ‘[b]lack people can bereduced (in white culture) to their bodies andthus to race, but white people are something

else that is realised in and yet is not reducible tothe corporeal/or racial’ (Dyer, 1997: 14–15).Hokowhitu has written about Maori masculinityin a Pacific context and has noted that the Maorimale body has also been reduced to ‘the physi-cal as opposed to the intellectual’ and repre-sented as ‘ruled by passion as opposed toreason’ (Hokowhitu, 2004: 260–266).

Fusco also explains how whiteness is centralto the project of colonial enterprise:

[w]hereas systems of racial classification fromthe eighteenth century onward reduced peopleof colour to the corporeal, whiteness wasunderstood as a spirit that manifests itself in adynamic relation to the physical world. White-ness, then, does not need to be made visible topresent an image; it can be expressed as thespirit of enterprise, as the power to organise thematerial world, and as an expansive relationto the environment. (Fusco and Wallis, 2003:34)

Susan Bordo has noted that this ‘spirit of enter-prise’ has been used as justification for the

Figure 5. Red, White and Blue, Torika Bolatagici, 2007, from the series Expendable Flesh, digital print on 100% cottonrag, 55.8 ¥ 55.8 cm each

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inhuman treatment of the ‘primitive savage’ andexplained that ‘[b]y the end of the nineteenthcentury, Europeans began rethinking their atti-tudes toward the primitive “savage,” not out of any sense of morality or political correctness,but because the primitive savage was beginningto be seen as having/something the Europeangentleman lacked and needed’ (Bordo, 2002:248–249). This ‘lack’ was perceived as brute

strength and an innate bodily intuition – idealfor manual labour and warfare.

The writing of Dyer, Bordo and Fusco pro-vided the conceptual background for the workExport Quality (Fig. 6) featuring a series of fourlarge light boxes that were produced in 2009.The title is a reference to text that appears oncans of Fiji Bitter beer but refers to the muchmore serious issue of bodies as a commodity tobe exported.

Rather than focusing on the skin, and thesurface of the body, I refer also to the absence of the body. By removing the figure from half theimage and leaving a white space, my intentionwas to raise questions about notions of absence

and presence, visibility and invisibility, both lit-erally in relation to bodily visibility in modernwarfare, and figuratively in relation to spiritualityand corporeality. In the white spaces, traditionalFijian masi (tapa cloth) designs have beenstamped into the illuminated backlit film. Thesepatterns are then illuminated when the light boxis powered and serve as a reminder of indig-enous Fijian spirituality that predates modern

warfare and transcends corporeality throughancestral links.

Dyer’s work on ‘whiteness’ is essential tounderstanding how black bodies have histori-cally been devalued – a theme that is central tomy ongoing project. Furthermore, Fusco andBordo’s work explicitly link racial classificationwith entrepreneurial fervour and the emergenceof exploitative relationships based on notions of superiority (whiteness) and inferiority (black-ness). When applied to the contemporaryeconomy of war, we can see how the Americanand British neocolonial project relies heavilyupon the economic vulnerability of Fijians toperform the essential duties of security and

Figure 6. Export Quality#1, Export Quality#2, Export Quality#3, Export Quality#4 (installation view), Torika Bolatagici,

2009 – Illuminated chromogenic print on Duratran, approximately 42 ¥ 54 cm

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combat work, a low-cost alternative to Ameri-can or British workers.

This notion of physical and economic vulner-ability is explored in my series Security/Threat(Figs 7–9), which fuses traditional warrior ges-tures, inspired by colonial photography, withcontemporary Fijian suburban settings to createan unsettling juxtaposition that addresses thecomplexity of black embodiment.

Security/threat: Vulnerable bodies

The works in the Security/Threat series(Figs 7–9) emerge from the premise that the

black body is inscribed as both threat andvictim. The images address this dichotomy andare designed as diptychs. The left-hand sideof each image is a scene from Nasinu photo-graphed at night. On the right hand side, thefigure assumes poses that were common inthe colonial images of Fijians from the Duftycollection, which were produced in the studioof Frank Dufty in Levuka and then Suvabetween 1871 and 1894 (see d’Ozouville,1997; Ewins, 2009). In the original stagedimages from the late 19th century, the Fijiansubjects are pictured holding traditionalweapons such as a club or battleaxe. In my

Figure 7. Buli Vacu (to clench the fists to fight), Torika Bolatagici, 2007, from the series Security/Threat, digital print on100% cotton rag. Dimensions variable

Figure 8. Vaniqa (the sound of someone treading on leaves), Torika Bolatagici, 2007, from the series Security/Threat,digital print on 100% cotton rag. Dimensions variable

Figure 9. Dau Butako (burglar), Torika Bolatagici, 2007, from the series Security/Threat, digital print on 100% cotton rag.Dimensions variable

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reinterpretations of these images, the weaponshave been removed and are referred to throughgesture. The removal of the weapons draws thefocus back to the body: no longer protected bya weapon, instead assuming an authoritativestance that suggests protection and security.

The background scenes were photographedin Nasinu, a suburb just outside Fiji’s capital,and the figures were photographed in a studioin Melbourne, Australia. I spent some time inNasinu in 2006, and developed a heightenedawareness for matters of security. There werebars on all the residential windows and fluores-cent security lights illuminated each house,while barking dogs alerted residents to passers-

by. At the time, the Fiji Times and Fiji Sun fea-tured stories about violent home invasions,robberies and assaults. Just prior to my visit, afriend’s home had been invaded despite themhaving gated security, a dog and a securityguard. She described how burglars were oftennaked so that people would not be able to gripclothing and their bodies would be oiled so thatthey could slip away from potential grasp. RodEwins, when writing about my work, com-mented that it reminded him of the Fijian cer-

emonial custom of applying oil and tumeric tothe warrior’s body (Ewins, 2009).

Security/Threat (Figs 7–9) speaks to thedouble bind of the black body – perceived asboth threat and protector. These images areintended to compel the viewer to consider thefutility of reductive dichotomies that seek toinscribe the black body as either menace orshield to be either feared or revered. Cassandra

Jackson summed up this dichotomised readingof the black body in her discussion of hip hop

album artwork ‘[t]hat the subject’s posture canbe read as intimidating or entreating at once,speaks to this complexity of myth and desire thatmaterialises in the image’ (Jackson, 2010: 53).

To this point, the discussion has focused onan analysis of the theoretical underpinning andsymbolism in my own visual arts practice, all of which are carefully staged re-enactments, shotin controlled environments and digitally alteredto illustrate a particular concept. In contrast tothese works, the following section considersvernacular photographs that have been taken byFijians employed by private security contractorsand by the British and US armies. These ‘found’photographs give us an insight into the ways in

which Fijian masculinity and militarism is per-formed and co-constructed by Fijians – and inthe democratised space of social networkingwebsites, these images serve the purpose of destabilising existing notions of a homogenousFijian masculinity.

Sotia central: Picturing ourselves

Until it was taken offline in April 2009,1 SotiaCentral (translation: soldier central) was a socialnetworking website that was hosted by the Fiji Times and had almost 20 000 members whowere composed of Fijians working for privatesecurity companies as well as Fijians employed

by the British and US armies. The site – whichoperated as a combination of personal profiles,chat and forum – allowed users to manage theirown public photo galleries, which is where Idiscovered the images included in the SotiaCentral installation (Figs 10,11). While thesesalvaged images were originally collected forthe purpose of research, they have acquirednew significance since they no longer exist inthe public domain and have been appropriatedby me for the purpose of creating juxta-

position with my own stylised, studio-basedphotographs.

The images retrieved from the originalwebsite are also crucial in forming an under-standing of how Fijian private security employ-ees and military personnel picture themselvesand how Fijian representations of militarismand the body differ to non-Fijian representationsof Fijian bodies and militarism. In this sense, wecan also look at the Fijian soldiers and privatesecurity employees as active agents in the

maintenance of images of Fijian militarism andmasculinity. It is not accurate or useful to viewFijian men as helpless victims in the globaleconomy. As Teaiwa has noted, there is aneed to acknowledge that militarism is ‘co-constructed; and in the Pacific, an active par-ticipant in such co-constructions is the Native’(Teaiwa, 2001: 86).

In the installation Sotia Central (Figs 10,11),we see predominantly males at work and inmoments of leisure. We see lovos being eatenon the back of pornographic centrefolds, kavadrinking in the desert, posing with tanks, air-craft, machinery, weapons and dressing up inmilitary regalia. Many of the found images of

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Figure 10. Sotia Central , Torika Bolatagici, 2009. Found images. Dimensions variable

Figure 11. Sotia Central , Torika Bolatagici, 2009. Found images. Dimensions variable

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Central , and their agency must be acknowl-edged. However, it is also important to considerthe contemporary situation as an extensionof neocolonial enterprise that relies on thedevaluation of black bodies to further globalmilitaristic pursuits.

Note

1 In 2008, the Sotia Central moderators sent the followingemail message to all users: ‘A message to all members of Sotia Central. The new Fiji Interim Government hasissued regulations requiring publishers to first submit allcontent to Government officials for clearance beforepublishing it. Because you, not we, generate thiscontent, we are unable to comply. Accordingly, sotia-central.com has been taken down until further notice’.

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