Waves of Knowing: A Seascape Epistemology by Karin A. Ingersoll (review)

In her first book, Waves of Knowing: A Seascape Epistemology, Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) political scientist, writer and surfer Karin Amimoto Ingersoll offers a significant account of knowing the ocean. This book joins the ranks of a growing number of critical works by Indigenous scholars that lay bare the colonial-epistemological legacy of a still western lived-in world and scholarship. Classified by the publisher within the fields of Hawaiian Studies, Native and Indigenous Studies, and Political Theory, the book offers a conceptual tool for decolonising and creating a new (political and ethical) foundation of knowing that is relevant beyond these disciplines. A well-grounded, expansive and ethnographic account of the sea, it is written in a poetic way that reflects a still widely unrecognised genre of Pacific Islander scholars – for example, Vilsoni Hereniko – who bring together poetic and scholarly writing. In this tradition, Ingersoll – literally – dives right into the introduction with an autoethnographic account of her experiences as Kanaka surf instructor, confronting the realities of a neocolonial surf tourism industry.

The theoretical framework of the book is an "intersection of knowledge systems" (24) that bridges European critical philosophy (Heidegger, Ranciere, Deleuze) and classic work of Pacific, Indigenous and Hawaiian scholars (Hau'ofa, Teaiwa, Kauanui, Kame'eleihiwa). Ingersoll's intention is to critique this binary, arguing that knowledge can travel and western thought may be hijacked to articulate an Indigenous framework. Seascape epistemology is also reflected in Ingersoll's methodology, which foregrounds the fluidity of theories, lived realities and identities. Drawing together autoethnographic experiences with oral histories, Hawaiian texts, poetry and artwork, Waves of Knowing creates what the author calls a living archive. Through this living archive, Ingersoll not only focuses on the genealogy of chants, songs and stories but combines them with interviews, ethnographic observations and her own oceanic experiences and sensibilities.

The book's two central concepts are seascape epistemology and oceanic literacy, with the latter being illustrated along he'e nalu (surfing) and ho'okele (navigation), as well as, to a lesser degree, lawai'a (fishing and farming). The chapter classification does not follow the more conventional structure of first introducing a concept to then explicate empirical cases – or vice versa, as is more common in anthropological writing. Rather, the book starts with an example of oceanic literacies (he'e nalu) in Chapter 1, followed by two chapters on the key concepts: oceanic literacy and seascape epistemology in. Chapter 4 focuses on another form of oceanic literacy, ho'okele, while the final chapter presents how seascape epistemology may be implemented in the form of ka hālau, a school. Following Ingersoll's writing tactic of collage, of "gluing the diverse and individual seascapes and sources together" (27), different topics transcend chapter "boundaries," thus reflecting the fluidity of seascape epistemology.

Chapter 1 provides a critical summary of the surf tourism and film industry's legacy of framing Hawaiian surf waves as something to ride for leisure, as seen in the popular Endless Summer film collection. The "Hawaiian Islands were flooded in a whitewash of idealism" (58) – a legacy that continues in the renaming of famous surf spots for Hawaiian royalty. While the surf tourism industry perpetuates a neocolonial legacy, contemporary Kanaka surfers carve out their own Indigenous identity that, reflective of a seascape epistemology, "rolls in and out of the world's shores" (77).

Chapter 2 contextualises he'e nalu as one form of oceanic literacy – a literacy of applied and embodied knowledge within a seascape epistemology, through which a surfer, navigator or fisher sees, reads, smells, hears, tastes and feels the ocean. It rests on Ranciere's concept of the distribution of the sensible, where an aesthetic logic remembers through performance; just as sand shifts, so does oceanic literacy (re-)create Hawaiian bodies, minds, land and sea. This logic is beautifully visualised in the bark cloth print Maka Upena by Romanchak, which also serves as the book's cover illustration. The ethics of oceanic literacy rests on, and grows from, a genealogical connection between body and...