I imagine that most readers of The Inertia have one, if only one, thing in common: we all participate in, or have participated in, the act of waveriding at some point in our lives. Certainly, our collective waveriding experience is characterized by varying degrees of intensity, duration, and performance level. In spite of these marked differences, we’ve all participated in the act, even the ritual, if you will, of waxing up some variety of surfcraft and paddling out somewhere on this big blue earth to catch a few waves where the sea meets the sand.
What is Daniel Thomson without this surfboard? And what is this surfboard without Daniel Thomson? Philosophical minds want to know.
The relationship between surfer and surfcraft is a complex one, and within the surfing community, the topic of surf craft selection – log, thruster, retro fish, mat, or hand plane – and identity is almost as timeless and heated as the discussion about guns and gun ownership in U.S. political discourse. To stick to the gun metaphor, the subject/object relationship that I’m trying to think about in the context of surfers/surfboards is illustrated by a few questions about guns familiar to most readers: do guns kill people or do people kill people? Or do people with guns kill people? Does a gun have agency? Does a person’s intentions change with a gun in hand?*
Now, I’m not about to ask whether surfboards kill people or people kill people (everybody knows that surf-related drug use kills people, several weeks of howling onshores nearly kill people (who surf), and that hordes of people who surf in L.A. want to kill Rory Parker even though he strikes me as a funny, provocative guy at a time when surf media needs provocation). But I am going to ask a few serious questions of interest to some serious scholars that I work with, these in the interests of initiating a larger philosophical inquiry:
What is a surfboard without a person?
And what is a surfer without a surfboard?
Can surfer and surfboard be separated? Or does divesting the waverider from the medium of waveriding suggest a different relationship/state of being different altogether?
Where does the wave come into the equation of ‘person + surfboard=surfer’?
How can we think about pre-commodity surfcraft in indigenous Hawaii, Polynesia, and Latin America? What’s a surfcraft mean to a fisherman in the year 1000 B.C.E.? To a Hawaiian king before Europeans showed up?
So, sit back and take a rip on your thought pipe. And then do me a favor and leave your thoughts below. Some big minds (not mine…) in the academic world have put me up to the test and I’m curious what fellow Inertia readers might have to say.
I beg your pardon for such an abstract and overtly philosophical inquiry (I assure you, this type of intervention is unlikely to displace “Top 10” lists, the SEO steroids in the online media weight room). And many thanks in advance to everyone and anyone who bothers to posit an answer, whether comical, serious, or antagonistic. From shapers to writers, hacks to rippers, pseudonymous instigators to outspoken commenters, and university students to righteous hipsters, I look forward to your responses in the comments below.
The author is currently drafting a philosophical intervention that attempts to decipher the complex relationship between human beings who surf and the objects that they use to surf based on the ‘thing theory’ of Mitchell, Brown, Latour, Gell, Belting, and countless others. Have a detailed response? Couldn’t be bothered to use the comments portal? Dude can be reached on twitter or via email. And no, this isn’t a joke.
* If you want to chew through some dense academese, I refer you to Bruno Latour’s interrogation of objects/things and people in Science in Action (1987) where he uses guns and people to explore the relationships between people and their stuff (and stuff and its people).
