Abstract
How is sex/gender/sexuality (sgs) employed through practices of recognition, legitimation, and positioning in surfing to constitute learning one’s body, one’s habitus, one’s positioning as particular bodies in a social field such as surfing? How does visuality, in the form of presence, perceived presence, and visual imagery (art, cartoons, photography, film) act as a pedagogical device of possibility, mediated by the pedagogical work of surfing and its media, to facilitate learning who one is and where one is positioned in relation to others in the field? I argue that qualities that constitute the pedagogical force of who/what could be recognized and legitimated as ‘surfer’ are embedded in politics of sgs based upon the taken-for-granted presuppositions, or doxa, of patriocolonial (hetero)normative supremacy and hegemony. Not only does this pedagogical force circumscribe what narratives we have to live by but also acts as an instrument of censorship against new narrative visions of surfing, different ways of knowing surfing, re-membering who and what constitutes/ed surfing, and recognizing those who contest surfing through their non-normative surfing bodies. This chapter discusses the pedagogy of visibility, including that contained in artefacts; of the image as a powerful mechanism for controlling female access to the waves, as a way for legitimating her as an athletic participant, and through recognition as a valued contributor constituting the surfing field.
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Notes
- 1.
Habitus is a concept used by Pierre Bourdieu that includes one’s dispositions, gestures, physicality, essentially one’s history that is inscribed in their very way of being. This works dialectically with the social fields in which one participates. One’s practices constitute the social field one is in at the same time that the social field constitutes one’s habitus. This is done through a system of various forms of capital (power) accrual where one’s connections (social capital), wealth (economic capital), or cultural goods, institutional background or embodiment (cultural capital). See lisahunter, Smith and Emerald (2015) and lisahunter (2015b) for further explanation of any Bourdieuian terms in this chapter.
- 2.
Doxa is another Bourdieuian term about practices and relationships that are orthodox, taken for granted, normalized, or naturalized, and therefore not necessarilly questioned for the power that might be operating to position someone more strongly than another.
- 3.
I use this term to include hegemonic Euro-American capitalistic colonializing forces that are mostly also white heterosexual male but in the case of surfing, and due to the temporally affected schism in surfing’s ontological history, may include white Euro-American colonizing females who were complicit in the manifestation of the surfing field we have today.
- 4.
‘Boxes’ are included with ‘Images’ in several places in this chapter to depict instances where an image could not be shown. This was due to either the publisher rules and owner permissions being incompatible or to the publisher regarding the image and its critique not putting subjects in a positive light. Given that I can describe and critique these images and point you to another online space where you can view them, their absence acts as further illustration of the power of the image. It would seem an important time to revise the use of images given their current ubiqutous presence online.
- 5.
The story of Duke and Isabel Letham riding tandem as being the origins of Australian surfing remains a popular image of history that illustrates the patriocolonial lens of surfing for nearly a hundred years. This ‘history’ was further memorialized this year in centenial celebrations of Duke and Isabel. See http://www.freshwaterslsc.com/events/dukes_day/. A different woman, Isma Amor, was riding before Letham (corresspondence with Gary Osmond, 2007. See also Murray G. Phillips and Gary Osmond, “Australia’s women surfers: history, methodology and the digital humanities”. Australian Historical Studies, in press (2015).
- 6.
See, for example, ‘13 Year Old Girl Perfectly Blasts Surf Mag for How They Depict Womanhttp://jezebel.com/13-year-old-girl-perfectly-blasts-surf-mag-for-how-they-1554990275’ (http://jezebel.com/13-year-old-girl-perfectly-blasts-surf-mag-for-how-they-1554990275?utm_campaign=socialfow_jezebel_twitter&utm_source=jezebel_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
- 7.
See the extensive and sometimes counter versions of a ‘history’ of surfing captured in texts such as Clarke, 2011; Comer, 2010; DeLaVega, 2004; Finney & Houston, 1996; Ford & Brown, 2006; Kampion & Brown, 2003; McNeice, 1998; Moser, 2008; Stranger, 2011; Walding, 2008; Walker, 2011; Warshaw, 2004, and while you are there, pay attention to author sex!
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
Permission to show these two images was denied.
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lisahunter (2016). Becoming Visible: Visual Narratives of ‘Female’ as a Political Position in Surfing: The History, Perpetuation, and Disruption of Patriocolonial Pedagogies?. In: Thorpe, H., Olive, R. (eds) Women in Action Sport Cultures. Global Culture and Sport Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-45797-4_16
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