Kristiawan Indriyanto, Ruly Indra Darmawan
This study examines the representation of disease in the form of leprosy through a reading of O.A Bushnell s Moloka i to address damage, trauma, inequality in a postcolonial Hawai i landscape. Bushnell s novel criticizes the stereotypical view of Hawai i as paradisal archipelago through a narration grounded within the socio-historical circumstances of leprosy outbreak and the ensuring discrimination and segregation towards its sufferers. Moloka i problematizes colonizer/colonized dichotomy by placing the disabled lepers Ebody in the entangled aspect of colonial hegemony and indigenous resistance within the interconnected nature of disease, disability and colonialism. This paper underlines how an econarratological perspective deconstructs readers Eown presupposition concerning Hawai i through the construction of virtual storyworld narrated from contrasting settlers/natives binarism in a polyvocal narration. An econarratological perspective actively invites reader to retrospectively shift their outlook from the dominant discourse rooted within colonial authority toward the emergence of indigenous voices, previously submerged in the narrative of diseases and disability. The use of first-person narrative personas problematizes the subjective consciousness in imagining material realities on how similar spatial scene is reimagined and then contrasted from a settler/native perspective. To concurs, Bushnell s Moloka i challenges the colonial construction of the indigene s diseased body as non-human Others through the emergence of polyvocal native voices established upon indigenous cosmology. © 2023 Shanghai Normal University. All rights reserved.
Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Universitas Prima Indonesia, Sampul Street 4, North Sumatra, Medan City, 20118, Indonesia; Faculty of Language and Arts, Universitas Negeri Semarang, Sekaran, Gunung Pati, Semarang City, Central Java, 50229, Indonesia
