If you could pick only one book to give you an adequate grasp of surfing history it should be Westwick and Neushul’s World in the Curl: An Unconventional History of Surfing (2013). Matt Warshaw’s History of Surfing and Encyclopedia of Surfing are ok — they give you a sense of some of the great legends of the practice and are definitely more visual — but World in the Curl is a critical history, which does not seek to lionize or glorify surfing’s problematic social issues. Yes, surfing is fun, the authors do not deny that. Obviously they surf and share a great love for surfing. It is on account of this love that they want to see their beloved with all of its imperfections. This is an honest approach to surfing history, one that seeks to get the story straight.
Westwick and Neushul frame surfing as having a “split personality” and ask whether or not it can continue to maintain this personality into the future:
“Much of its appeal has come from its rebellious, countercultural spirit—like rock ‘n’ roll, but even better because it involves nature. But surfing is tangled up with such dominant social forces as tourism, warfare, environmental engineering, and global commerce. Surfing is business, whether it’s selling surfboards, surfwear, tourism, magazines, forecasting websites, or pro contests. As Wall Street and Madison Avenue co-opted surfing, it became more accessible but also lost some of its original appeal. The more people got turned onto the stoke, the less fun there was in surfing. How subversive is surfing, when it is a billion-dollar business run by multinational conglomerates? When twelve-year-old kids from Manhattan, New York, to Manhattan, Kansas, spend their parents’ money on surf trunks that will never get wet? And when most surf lineups are bastions of middle-class white males? Can surfing go mainstream and still be a counterculture? Or does surfing’s popularity carry the seeds of its own demise? (316)”
That is an open ended question, but one always worth asking. I trend to the side of cautious optimism. Unlike Aaron James, author of Surfing with Sartre: An Aquatic Inquiry into a Life of Meaning (2017), I do not believe that what he calls ‘the surfer’ is a “new model of civic virtue”. I do believe that the more we face our split personality (and its history) and take it as it is — problematic — the more we are equipped to answer Westwick and Neushul’s question in a robust and nuanced way. I am tired of the formula “____ ruined surfing.” As Westwick and Neushul state, the very allure, the very fun aspect of surfing, its contagiousness if you will, is a constitutive part of its problem. In order for us to become “new models of civic virtue” we have to face the ambiguity and ambivalence in our own practices, own up to them, and figure out new ways to position ourselves towards them. This might mean taking stock of your own entitlement. Are you one of those middle-class white males taking up space in the lineup? Do you think you deserve more waves than other people? If so, what is your rationale? What is your surfboard made of? Who made it? Where did you buy it? Do you know the history of the materials and the shape of your surfboard? When was the last time you saw a person of color in the water? When was the last time you saw a woman surfer and assumed from the get go that she wasn’t capable of surfing well? What are your thoughts about other people in the water more generally? How do you view your own surfing in light of all of this?
To ask these kinds of questions is to become aware of the fact that you are, in the words of phenomenological or critical philosophy, an intentional being. This does not just mean that you have a consciousness that you are able to direct towards certain things, but more that you are a being that is embedded in a world with others. The being of your intentionality is constituted by this world and these others in and with which you coexist. The practices that you enjoy or practice all have histories, very complicated and intricate histories of subjects and objects interrelating and informing one another. These interstices of historicity and facticity inform the new discourses on intersectionality, which are really important to grapple with as we attempt to imagine better, more ethical futures. And in order to do that — in order to move forward — we need to look back and take stock of the past.
Modern surfing has a troubled history when it comes to race and gender, which Westwick and Neushul do a great job of accounting for in chapters such as Chp 3 “The Dark Side of Paradise: Race and Sex in Hawaii” and Chp 13 “Women and Surfing: From Flappers to Roxy Girl”. One of the most eye opening chapters on this subject, however, is Chp 8 “Surfing Turns Pro”. Here Westwick and Neushul show how when surfing became professionalized as a competitive sport, it was dominated by Australian, South African, and American attitudes and stances towards race and sex:
“The growth of pro surfing moderated, but did not erase, surfing’s countercultural image, but in one prominent way surfing very much reinforced the dominant culture: it remained an overwhelmingly white (and male) sport in most places outside Hawaii. This was most clearly the case in South Africa, which rode colonial sports enthusiasm to a prominent role in pro surfing while adhering to apartheid. But surfing in Australia and California also showed little ethnic diversity, which suggested that for all its countercultural cachet, surfing very much reflected mainstream attitudes when it came to race [and gender] (146).”
It is also of note that during this time one of surfing’s most infamous “legends”, Miki Dora, self exiled himself to South Africa. Dora is idolized by legions of surfers for his devil-may-care antics and flamboyant style on and off the beach. The truth of the matter is that despite the fact that he was a great surfer, Dora should be anything but a role a model for anyone. I would even argue that we should maybe not even take his great surfing seriously. Some may call this “cancel culture”, but Dora drew swastikas on his surfboard, stole money from his friends, committed wild bouts of credit card and check fraud, and held unacceptable racist attitudes. Author Daniel Duane penned a recent piece in the New York Times that dives into some of the nuances. Or if we don’t “cancel” Dora, we should at least place an asterisk by his name.
Just two days ago I was scrolling through instagram and saw a post that was lauding Dora, loaded with comments from famous professional surfers about how awesome Dora was. I thought about chiming in and saying, “Hey guys, what about the racism?” but I knew it would fall on deaf ears. A lot of a surfers have a very peculiar way of “only looking at the bright side” or being unrealistically optimistic just on account of the fact that at the end of the day surfing is really a ton of fun. But fun has a cost. And surfing is not cheap either! It is important that we explore all these facets of the practice we so much adore. And it is also important that we think about the solipsistic and exceptional attitudes so many surfers have. One of the myths that I am working to dispel is that surfing is this great individualistic enterprise — that there is ever a time when “it’s just me, the ocean, and my board, man.” Just by being in the ocean, with millions of particles of other people’s shit and piss, you are connected to all of the world! There is no way, not through surfing, not through meditation, and not even through death, that you can extricate yourself from this world with others. I find it much better to face the fact that we are all connected to one another and to take more responsibility for that fact.
So while you’re being a socially responsible surfer, not surfing during these times, or doing so very sparingly, very safely, and as far away from others as possible, pick up this book. You may want to pick up some of the others I’ve linked as well. Notice that I’m giving you Alibris links and not Amazon. I think Bezos has enough money, and you should try to find smaller bookstores if you can. Two other books I’m engaged with right now are The Critical Surf Studies Reader (2019) and 50 Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology (2020). The former contains some great scholarship on surfing. The latter is about the phenomenological method and features new ways of thinking about it and applying it in light of recent changes in perspective and method. Both of these contain short, but deep and well written essays. If you’d like to schedule a time to do some reading or go over some of these histories and concepts I’m happy to!!!