Abstract
This paper explores how surf aesthetics are drawn from racialized productions of fantasy that frame the tropics as an escape from rationality. Drawing from philosophies of aesthetics and postcolonial theory as well as my own experience as a surfer, I examine cultural archives to show how this fantasy is undermined by local surfers. Maintaining local knowledges - epistemologies concerning swell, wind and coastal shapes - becomes an act of resistance in the face of gentrifying forces and increased presence of surfers from the Global North. This project offers three critical engagements: (1) it analyzes Jack London’s The Cruise of the Snark as an archive of the colonial gaze. London’s description of Polynesian surfers highlights a sensational and prelapsarian entangling of the body and the coast. This writing posits the coastal spot as a spot of irrationality. Contemporary surf tourism continues to use this trope (2) The multi-million dollar Salvadoran tourist infrastructure project “Surf City” draws on these same tropes of fantasy. I read blog posts to highlight how the tourist spaces are discursively produced as enclosed fantasies separate from demands of a supposed “real” and northern world. (3) Finally, I argue that - the continued presence of local surfers undermines this constructed fantasy. Through local epistemologies, surf locality becomes a radical ontological state in the face of growing gentrification. This paper reads the surf lineup as a site of contested materiality, meaning and identity, where the complex and locally situated etiquettes of surf culture mediates negotiations between local and global identities.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2026 Special Focus—Pathways to Resilience; Sustainable Practices in Tourism and Leisure
KEYWORDS
Locality, Epistemology, Surfing, Globalization
