Can we, then, combine a European vision with an Oceanic vision to generate the sharpness, stereoscopy, depth of perspective and three-dimensionality appropriate to looking with both eyes, from both sides? Or will this “double vision” generate the other meaning of that term: a visual disturbance, a blurring of view with the haunting spectre of one eye’s vision hanging in a visual field remote from the other? There has been a tremendous stress on vision in cross-cultural encounters in the Pacific from the earliest works of Bernard Smith (1985 [1960]) to those writings of postcolonial theorists preoccupied with the gaze, and others who privilege the visual arts in the histories of such encounters. There is no doubt that vision is a crucial sensibility and that visual materials from both sides of encounters need to be considered alongside words both written and spoken. But, as has been often alleged, vision, the privileged Western sense, is intimately linked to power and control, most notably in those analyses of colonial power, inspired by Foucault, that see the power of the panopticon of Western asylums transplanted into the architectonics of colonial space (Mitchell 1988) and textual and visual encyclopedia of races or castes (see Pinney 1992). Those who have critiqued the more facile uses of theories of the colonial gaze (e.g. Kelly 1997) have often queried an undue or anachronistic association between looking and power, or have insisted on the process of “looking back” or returning the gaze (see Jolly and Manderson 1997, 1–26; Jolly 1997b).

And there may be a larger cross-cultural problem here. The European stress on the visible and the controllable is dramatically at odds with dominant Oceanic philosophies which perceive the visible as but one manifestation, materialisation or embodiment of invisible and ultimately uncontrollable forces (see Thomas 1995 on this, in the context of Oceanic art). So, Tcherkézoff (2004b) argues in his review of the debate between Sahlins and Obeyesekere apropos ancient Hawaiians’ perceptions of Cook that there has been a constant mis-recognition even by anthropologists and linguists of the way in which human beings and material images (ata) of gods (atua), although in a sense themselves atua, “remain partial and temporary manifestations of the atua-as-a-principle” (2004a, 6). Thus, despite the Polynesian celebration of the world of light and form over the realm of darkness and chaos, the truth of the visible can be eclipsed by powerful invisible forces, divine creative and destructive principles. But for Europeans, from the eighteenth century onward, the visible was increasingly becoming linked to the power of the real.

Given this problem of divergent philosophies and values of vision, might we explore other senses in the process of encounter? The trope of “first contact” highlights touch, the brush of bodies. John Kelly (1997) in his analysis of the sexualised violence which Indo-Fijian women experienced at the hands of Europeans and Australians stressed the importance of “grasping” rather than gazing. And more recently, in relation to the global connections of the present, Anna Tsing (2005) has used the metaphor of friction to convey the “grip” of cross-cultural encounters, presumably more mutual and less violent than a “grasp” and suggestive of both attraction and repulsion, of connection and of difference.

The brush of bodies, violent and sensual, is a crucial dimension of most of the encounters we explore. And, as well as looking and touching, there are those other senses which move between and beyond bodies: the oral/aural, the kinesthetic and the senses of taste and smell, often diminished in Western sensoria. The oral/aural perhaps moves encounters away from the distance implicit in “looking” – and especially “gazing” – to listening and speaking, to the processes of faltering translation in understanding speech, music and song.

The narratives of early Enlightenment voyages evince a keen interest in trying to learn the languages of Pacific peoples. Early attempts at recording, classification and analysis, such as that by Johann Reinhold Forster in his Observations, laid the foundations of Oceanic linguistics (see Forster 1996 [1778]). On such voyages Tahitian guides such as Tupaia, crucial as navigators and translators in the Polynesian islands where languages were fewer and closely cognate, became far less help in understanding the diverse languages of archipelagoes like Vanuatu or New Caledonia and, of course, Australia (see Dening 2004, 171–5; Salmond 2003, 116–34, 141–5, 153–8; Thomas 1997a, 1ff.). Still, Europeans early attempted to record word lists, such as the word “Tanna”, which they wrongly interpreted to be the specific name of this island, rather than the generic name for ground or earth (see Lindstrom 2009).^[2] This island is still known by this word today. Often superficial translations of indigenous words and concepts generated confusion and conflict. So, early in the passage of European voyagers in the Polynesian part of the Pacific, they encountered a variant of the word taio. This was interpreted into English as “friend,” but entailed much more than the European understanding of that word, since it implied a ritual closeness of identity marked by exchanging names and by free use of the others’ possessions (Salmond 2003, 193–4, 198–9). So, Europeans were shocked on occasion when their taio took their iron tools or their cloth, thinking them no longer friends, but duplicitous, treacherous thieves.

Europeans also speculated as to the meanings of words constantly uttered in their presence and thus about indigenous perceptions of themselves (see Jolly, this volume, on tomarr). A common trope in the celebration of mutual understanding was the sharing of song: as in the performance of indigenous chants alongside German lieder during Cook’s second voyage on Tanna, or in alternate performances of dance. Although the figure of “dancing with strangers” has been deployed by Inga Clendinnen (2003) as an icon for cross-cultural exploration in Australia, in the Pacific, dance was more often witnessed than imitated by strangers from Europe. And, as Tcherkézoff (2004a, pt 3; 2004b, ch. 10) has shown, the canonical Polynesian dances like the hula of Hawai`i or the heiva of Tahiti were wrongly perceived as lascivious or lewd. Rather, such displays of nakedness signalled respect for the strangers, catalysing and even celebrating divine unions with them to secure sacred and potent progeny.

Perhaps least explored of all have been the senses of taste and smell, which suggest the permeability of the body and, thus, the risk of cultural mixing or contagion. Europeans had, from the start, adjudged Polynesian fragrances and body oils attractive, while the same navigators had, for instance, expressed a strong disgust when they made contact with the “Patagons” (Bougainville, quoted in Tcherkézoff 2004a, ch. 7). Still, not all Polynesians were thought so alluring. So, in Georg Forster’s account of meeting Maori on Cook’s second voyage we find a lament about undue mixing, threatened by an unwanted “odoriferous present” of an unguent (possibly seal oil), conferred on the artist William Hodges (Forster 2000 [1777], 1: 98).^[3]