Gledhill argues that the Kwaio people are an example of how resistance is shaped by domination. He claims that the new Church centered on curing and ritual re-creation of the flesh, as well as mocked European protestant orthodoxy’s symbols (Gledhill, 2000). Parody allowed the pagan Kwaio to exploit the semiology of the Western rule to build a refute language based on imitation without reverence. It would be reasonable to claim that one can discover a form of parody within two dimensions (Gledhill, 2000). First, there is a parody in a literal sense flowing through the Kwaio works, a mostly purposeful replication of the oppressors’ semiology, used as a sarcastic tactic of resistance. Second, there is something that is not actually a parody in the formal sense but merely looks to be so from the perspective of the European beholders.
Plantation laborers brought to Queensland and Samoa, as well as Fiji, were the Kwaio’s initial introduction to the European colonial realm. The slaughter of about a thousand Kwaio people by the retaliatory mission was the defining incident of their colonial memory (Gledhill, 2000). Despite being adamant pagans in a society in which everybody else had turned to Christianity, the Kwaio learned to understand their pagan-ness via Christian rhetoric. For instance, a Kwaio monk took the nickname “Peter Satan” (Gledhill, 2000, p. 83) Given that the Christian Churches described the people’s forefathers as representations of the Devil, the ancient pagan culture as the dark one, and conversion as a form of reincarnation, the Kwaio countered Christian dominion theology by embracing its concepts but reversing their meanings. Thus, Gledhill’s presented pieces of evidence give the opportunity to confirm that the presence of the hostile British colonial factor united Kwaio dogmatic forces in their resistance to the foreign element.
Reference
Gledhill, J. (2000). Power and its disguises: Anthropological perspectives on politics (2nd ed.). Pluto Press.