Overview

In Waves of Knowing Karin Amimoto Ingersoll marks a critical turn away from land-based geographies to center the ocean as place. Developing the concept of seascape epistemology, she articulates an indigenous Hawaiian way of knowing founded on a sensorial, intellectual, and embodied literacy of the ocean. As the source from which Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) draw their essence and identity, the sea is foundational to Kanaka epistemology and ontology. Analyzing oral histories, chants, artwork, poetry, and her experience as a surfer, Ingersoll shows how this connection to the sea has been crucial to resisting two centuries of colonialism, militarism, and tourism. In today's neocolonial context-where continued occupation and surf tourism marginalize indigenous Hawaiians-seascape epistemology as expressed by traditional cultural practices such as surfing, fishing, and navigating provides the tools for generating an alternative indigenous politics and ethics. In relocating Hawaiian identity back to the waves, currents, winds, and clouds, Ingersoll presents a theoretical alternative to land-centric viewpoints that still dominate studies of place-making and indigenous epistemology.

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9780822362128

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Reviews

Karin Amimoto Ingersoll presents her readers with a manifesto calling for a relocation of self through the sea as an affective and embodied tradition for a resurgence of indigenous Hawaiian epistemologies. By focusing on the seascape as an epistemological and ontological site that reconfigures bodies in relation to land, community, and relations, Ingersoll powerfully articulates a mode of being that counters the devastating effects of colonialism. -- Jodi A. Byrd, author of * The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism * A risk-taking and vividly written work, Waves of Knowing helps destabilize reigning land-centered frameworks of contemporary place-making and, all the more so, puts the Hawaiian oceanic sensibility back where it culturally and politically belongs. With flair, range, and commitment, Karin Amimoto Ingersoll shows ocean and land to be one interactive Hawaiian continuum of embodied place-making. Waves of Knowing offers an important, timely, and conjunctive intervention into Hawaiian studies, oceanic studies, and decolonizing indigenous scholarship. -- Rob Wilson, author of * Reimagining the American Pacific: From South Pacific to Bamboo Ridge and Beyond *

A risk-taking and vividly written work, Waves of Knowing helps destabilize reigning land-centered frameworks of contemporary place-making and, all the more so, puts the Hawaiian oceanic sensibility back where it culturally and politically belongs. With flair, range, and commitment, Karin Amimoto Ingersoll shows ocean and land to be one interactive Hawaiian continuum of embodied place-making. Waves of Knowing offers an important, timely, and conjunctive intervention into Hawaiian studies, oceanic studies, and decolonizing indigenous scholarship. --Rob Wilson, author of Reimagining the American Pacific: From South Pacific to Bamboo Ridge and Beyond

Author Information

Karin Amimoto Ingersoll is an independent scholar, writer, and surfer based in Honolulu, Hawaii. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa.

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