I also have an interest in Healey's explicit disavowal of referring to the paituareha as "fairies"; as Mark says, "that's an English word," and he clearly isn't referring just to the name of the language. Trying to describe a non-English race of fair folk (and they are quite fair, both literally and figuratively) using an essentially English framework in the New Zealander context points out the colonialism inherent in the move--but is there an extent to which telling stories about "fairies" is intrinsically culturally Western? Can we insist on the difference sufficient to short-circuit all that comes with the old paradigm? Or does giving the non-Englishness of the paituareha and their fellow non-fairy fair folk center stage automatically explode the paradigm? I'm not sure.
We will be discussing this at our panel, oh, yes! ;)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regna
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-05 01:42 (UTC)We will be discussing this at our panel, oh, yes! ;)