Tahiti Intertwined: Ancestral Land, Tourist Postcard, and Nuclear Test Site Author(s): Miriam Kahn Reviewed work(s): Source: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 102, No. 1 (Mar., 2000), pp. 7-26 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/683535 . Accessed: 23/03/2012 00:39 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Blackwell Publishing and American Anthropological Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Anthropologist. http://www.jstor.org MIRIAM KAHN Departmentof Anthropology University of Washington Seattle, WA 98195 Tahiti Intertwined: Ancestral Land, Tourist Postcard, and Nuclear Test Site In this article,I apply ideas from Foucault,Lefebvre, and Soja aboutthirdspace, or space beyond dualisms,to an under- standingof "Tahiti"as a complex,intertwined place. For most Tahitians,a sense of placeis rootedin land, which individu- als describeas a nurturingmother. Genealogical ties to land define personalidentities and social relationships.For the world at large,however, the perceptionof Tahitiis basedon seductive,mass-mediated, touristic images. The perpetuation of these images, whose originsgo backtwo-hundred years, has become increasinglyenmeshed in the economicand politi- cal agendasof the Frenchcolonial government.The resumptionof nucleartesting in FrenchPolynesia in 1995-96 andthe subsequentrioting by Tahitians,which disseminatednegative images throughoutthe world,provide a settingfor an analy- sis of Tahitithat moves beyonddualisms. Tahiti is understoodinstead as an intertwinedthirdspace, equally real andimag- ined, immediateand mediated. [place, colonialism, imagery, tourism, nuclear testing] The space in which we live, which drawsus out of ourselves, ([1974] 1991:6). He argues for a science that moves beyond in which the erosionof our our time and our lives, historyoc- mere descriptions of what exists in space or discourses on the thatclaws and at is in a curs, space gnaws us, also, itself, space to one that gives rise to a knowledge of space and its ... we live inside a set of relations. heterogeneousspace production ([1974]1991:7). Space, he says, embraces a [MichelFoucault 1986:23] multitude of intersections. Desiring to create a theoretical Thereis no "reality"without a concentrationof energy,with- unity between fields that are apprehended separately (the out a focus or the core-nor, therefore, without dialectic. physical and the mental), but interact with and influence [HenriLefebvre (1974)1991:399] one another, Lefebvre labels his project the development of a "unitarytheory" ([1974]1991:14). He outlines a dyad, In to understand social life, late-twentieth- grappling from which a triad, or "thirdspace"(il y a toujours l'autre), scholars have to the same kind of in- century begun give emerges. tense analytical attention to space that nineteenth- and FIRSTSPACE SECOND early twentieth-century scholars gave to history. In the SPACE THIRDSPACE mental social past, as Michel Foucault ([1976]1980:70) points out, physicalspace space space perceivedspace conceivedspace livedspace "space was treated as the dead, the fixed, the undialectical, (l'espace (l'espacecongu) (l'espace the immobile. Time, on the contrary, was richness, fecun- pergu) vdcu) dity, life, dialectic." As the relative positioning of space It is the thirdspace that he desires to understand. Simul- and time has become realigned, space has emerged as more taneously physical and mental, concrete and abstract, it central than before and, around it, a new body of literature emerges from the dialectic of the two. Mental space, for- has developed. This may be in part because, as Foucault mulated in the head, is projected onto physical reality, (1986:23) states, "the anxiety of our era has to do funda- which in turn feeds the imaginary. Edward Soja (1989:18) mentally with space, no doubt a great deal more than with refers to thirdspace as the habitus of social practices, a con- time." Scholars like Foucault have not only recognized the stantly shifting and changing milieu of ideas, events, ap- importance of space in understanding social action, but pearances, and meanings (Soja 1996:2). have illuminated new ways of thinking about space, an ap- This idea of thirdspace, formulated by Foucault and Le- proach Foucault calls "heterotopology." febvre in France in the 1970s, and applied by Soja in the Henri Lefebvre, likewise, in his powerful treatise on the 1980s and '90s,' has had surprisingly little impact on disci- production of space, calls for a "science of space" that plines like anthropology that aim to understand people and overcomes the "abyss between the mental sphere on one environments. Indeed, for much of anthropology's history, side and the physical and social spheres on the other" place has been neglected. For decades, it was relegated to a AmericanAnthropologist 102(1):7-26. Copyright0 2000, AmericanAnthropological Association 8 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST * VOL. 102, No. 1 * MARCH 2000 static physical backdrop,a kind of stage-settingremoved more than most places, Tahiti has a life of its own that from human action and interaction-the mandatoryfirst dwells in outsiders'imaginations.6 While conductingmy chapterin every earlyethnography. Only in the pastdecade research,I lived in two differentvillages, both in the Lee- or so have anthropologistscome to gripswith its complexi- wardgroup of the Society Islands(one of the five archipel- ties, even pleadingfor a theory of place (Rodman1992). agos in FrenchPolynesia). Yet, theirrenewed interest in the topic has often only per- One village, Fetuna,on the island of Raiatea,is located petuatedthe abyss in one of anthropology'sown set of du- 25 kilometersfrom Uturoa, the island'smain town andthe alisms, namely between outsider/insiderperspectives. local Frenchadministrative center. Raiatea is heavilyinflu- Some anthropologistshave deconstructedthe powerful enced by its administrativerole, which producesa strong concepts of place that outsiders entertain and impose French bureaucraticpresence. I chose Fetunabecause it throughan assemblageof representations.Tourism indus- was as faraway as one couldget fromUturoa on the island. tries, for example, produce countless texts and images Although some Fetuna residents worked in town, most throughwhich spacesget transformedinto, and reproduced spenttheir days in the village. There,houses lined an un- as, sites and destinations.2Museum exhibits and theme paved, poorly maintained,coastal road made of dirt that parksalso rely on fabricatedsettings to providecontext and hadbeen packedwith crushedcoral and shell dredged from convey messages.3Likewise, the mass marketingof goods the sea. One day, the mara'amutrade winds blew fiercely dependson the manipulationof images of places to influ- and the sea thrashedover the road,leaving behind piles of ence the consumingpublic. Capitalistmarkets, while eco- trash that otherwise resided unobtrusivelyon the ocean nomically needing other peoples and environments,may floor. Rusty tin cans, plastic bottles, disposablediapers, politically seek to eliminate them through consciously plasticbags, torn clothes, and broken thong sandals littered craftedmisrepresentations (Williamson 1986). the road. Severaldays afterthe winds had calmed down, Othershave triedto understandplaces from the perspec- governmentemployees responsiblefor road maintenance tive of their inhabitants,noting that places are developed arrived.They sat on top of their yellow road gradersand interactivelyas individualsrelate to them, shapethem, and lethargicallybut methodicallyplowed the garbageback createthem.4 They have connectedplaces to social imagi- into the sea. Thatsame roadcircled the islandand, eventu- nation and practice, to dwelling and movement, and to ally, widerand paved, led into Uturoawhere it was flanked memoryand desire, and have found worldsthat are sung, by numerousshops selling food, clothing, pharmaceuti- narrated,and mapped(Feld and Basso 1996:8, 11). Focus- cals, stationerygoods, fishing gear, and other sundries. ing on the internallyconstructed and negotiatednature of Upon enteringthese stores,shoppers were usuallygreeted place, anthropologistshave produceda varietyof new de- by posters and calendarswith pictures of sandy white scriptivephrases to debunkthe old notion of location as beaches under stunningblue skies, racks of postcardsof staticbackdrop. These newly perceivedspaces are said to coquettish, bare-breastedwomen, or magazines with be "discursivelyconstructed" (Appadurai 1988), "multilo- glossy photos of multicoloredfish dartingthrough spar- cal" and "multivocal"(Rodman 1992), unconfined"eth- kling turquoiselagoons. noscapes"(Gupta and Ferguson 1992), and "dynamic mul- The other village I lived in was Faie, locatedon Hua- tisensualprocesses" (Hirsch and O'Hanlon1995). Yet, the hine, an island whose inhabitantsare known for being hoped-fortheory of place has not materialized.Anthropol- proud and independent.The center of Faie was densely ogy's recentconcern