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ABSTRACT

Since it was first popularized in America in the 1950s, surfing has exploded into a

youth counterculture, a professional sport and a multi-billion dollar industry.

Communication within surf culture revolves around a myriad of unique cultural symbols

and rituals that give its participants a shared sense of meaning. Individual members of

surf culture, as well as surf-related media, frequently represent the surfing lifestyle as one

that includes a liberating frame of mind and a spiritually significant experience.

This study uses ethnographic research methods to examine the specific meanings

of a particular group of surfers in southern California in order to evaluate their

revolutionary potential. First, this study finds that the experience of surfing can provoke

meditative thinking, which can challenge modes of enframing and colonization of the

mind. Second, this study finds that the rhetoric of spiritual fulfillment within surf culture

aligns with Deleuze and Guattaris concept of immanence, which may provide a method

for challenging global capitalism.


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .............................................................................................. xx

Chapter1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 1

A Struggling Family Adopts the Surfer Ethic ....................................................... 1

Purpose and Significance ...................................................................................... 6

2. A REVIEW OF THE RELEVANT LITERATURE ............................................. 9

Surf History ........................................................................................................... 9

Colonization of the Mind ...................................................................................... 13

Immanence ............................................................................................................ 16

3. METHODS ........................................................................................................... 21

An Interpretive Framework for Understanding Surf Culture ................................ 21

Ethnographic Assumptions and Methodology ...................................................... 23

4. FINDINGS ............................................................................................................ 27

Surfing as Context ................................................................................................. 27Surfing and Decolonization of the Mind ............................................................... 30

Soul Surfing and Immanence ................................................................................ 37

5. DISCUSSION ....................................................................................................... 45

Colonization of the Mind ...................................................................................... 46

Immanence ............................................................................................................ 49

Implications and Future Research ......................................................................... 53

6. CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................... 55

REFERENCES ............................................................................................................. 57


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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First, I would like to thank my family for taking me to the beach so much as a child,

and for emphasizing the values that determine my relationship to the world. This project

was only possible because of them.

Second, I would like to thank my committee chair, Jon Bruschke, whose guidance

and support is authentic and unwavering. I would also like to thank Jeanine Congalton

and Bob Emry, whose support was indispensible to the success of this project.


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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Surfing is magic, riding liquid echoes of cosmic energy at the wild fringes of

continents. ~Drew Kampion

A Struggling Family Adopts the Surfer Ethic

In the early 1960s, plagued by drug abuse and the stress of a blue collar existence,

a young boy named Robby struggled to cope with a deteriorating home life. His family

lived near the beach in southern California, which was quickly becoming a hotbed for

new lifestyles and countercultures. Indeed, the youth cultures frustration with the

traditional values of the 1950s and the Vietnam War created the conditions for a variety

of new life perspectives to emerge. As the hippies negotiated their vision of the future

with the beatniks in San Francisco, the popularization of surfing developed a uniquely

different lifestyle in the southern beach cities. Robby was mesmerized by the youths

mass migration to the sea and inspired by the feel good attitude expressed in surf-related

media. One day, Robbys friend Tom arrived at his house before school with a crudely

shaped plank of pine wood. Excited, the two boys ditched their seventh grade classes,

headed to Huntington State Beach and paddled out for the first time.

At first, Robby was drawn to surfing because of the shared thrill of riding the face

of a wave with his friends. He also fully appreciated the emerging surf culture, and

proudly performed various acts of rebelliousness associated with surfers, including


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habitual pranks and alcohol use. However, as he became more committed to the activity

as a teenager, he began to experience a different frame of mind whenever he was in the

water. Robby discovered that surfing focused his attention on the rhythm of the waves

and a sense of connectedness with the environment. He believed that this frame of mind

promoted peacefulness and provided an escape from the pain of his everyday experience.

It was not long before Robby was hooked, surfing four to five times a week all along the

California coast. Robbys experiences in the water gave him a new perspective that

helped him manage his frustrations at home. Over the course of decades in the water,

Robby developed an ocean-minded spirituality that he believes shapes his closest

relationships with friends and family.

Once he returned from his service in the Marine Corps, Robby held several

contract jobs as a professional deep sea diver. From New Orleans to a variety of

locations along the western coast, he would descend to the sea floor with a high pressure

water cannon to spray barnacles off large underwater oil rigs. This satiated his appetite

for an ocean-based lifestyle, but it was ultimately too dangerous a profession to support

his new family. After switching careers to work for a major national railroad, Robby

seized every opportunity to take his wife and three children to the beach. With his own

dark passenger of alcoholism constantly eating away at his home life, these regular

journeys to the beach became a setting for truly significant family communication.

On a warm summer day in 1992, Robby took his nine-year-old son into the

water to surf for the first time. He pushed me in the white water for about an hour,

making sure I caught the waves and kept balanced on the board. Those first few rides


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were exhilarating, but they also symbolize the first meaningful bond between us. As I

grew up, some of Robbys own childhood family problems were mirrored in our

household. Our relationship survived despite the addiction and painful interactions that

layered over each other. Our commitment to resolve our family disasters was

strengthened and enhanced by our experiences together at the beach. In other words, my

family developed an ethic of love in the rhythm of the sea. It deeply shapes our

relationships to each other, the cultural meanings we share and our understanding of the

cosmos.

It seems that our family is not alone in our special relationship to surfing and the

sea. Surf documentaries and surf magazines often reflect upon the feelings that the

activity provokes. It has always seemed to me that the experience is slightly different for

each person, yet thematically connected. After all, for decades, both casual and

professional surfers have used the term stoked to describe their experience surfing

(Warshaw, 2005, p. 702). The predominant affect of surfing is a form of coenaesthesis

that aficionados call stoke, a fully embodied feeling of satisfaction, joy and pride

(Booth, 2008, p. 22) (citing Evers, 2006, 230231; see also Grissim, 1982; Cralle, 2001).

Although derived from the phrase stoking the fire, the meaning ofstokeis different for

individual surfers. Some describe stoke as never about winning or losing or ripping or

shredding, large or small, wind or glass, but rather about rhythm and flow and

surrender and balance and bliss (Lane, 2008, p. 54). Being stoked to surf is like being

stoked to be alive (Lane, 2008, p. 55).


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The thrill of surfing cannot be reduced to the physical rush of being caught in the

interplay between gravity and saltwater. The ride itself is certainly thrilling, but the

experience seems to mean something much deeper to many surfers. Indeed, a shared

sense of spiritual fulfillment has come to characterize the sport and color the personalities

of its players. There are many different types of surfers, and it would not be fair to say

that they all share the same ideological values. Nevertheless, for better or worse, surfing

is stereotyped as a culture that holds a laid-back environmentally friendly attitude and a

meaningful connection to the forces of nature. At first glance, this does not seem

particularly surprising. Deleuze and Guattari once commented that waves are vibrations,

shifting borderlines inscribed on the plane of consistency as so many abstractions

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Navigating these vibrations successfully requires a mental

and physical release, which can come to influence ones other perspectives on the world.

However, Taylor notes that surfing is not easily categorized. It can drift into art,

vocation and avocation, even religion (Taylor, 2007). The fluid nature of the activity, as

well as the multiplicity of meanings attributed to it, raise unique questions about the

nature of human communication within surf culture.

Professional surfers often refer to surfing as a lifestyle rather than an as an

activity. Some even call it a life. In other words, surfing exists in a web of broader

social relationships that shape our symbolic interactions, similar to the way that Robbys

surfing experiences cultivated an ocean-minded spirituality that informed his personal

relationships with friends and family. For me, surfing requires a mode of being that is

dynamic and creative. Each wave is different, and every moment in the water requires


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spontaneous reflection and action. That frame of mind influences my interactions with

other surfers in the water, as well as my communication with people on land. However,

my personal experience is simply one coordinate in the vast history of the sport. After all,

the true story of surf culture includes all surfers of all eras . . . the complete history of

surfing includes every wave ridden by every surfer throughout time (Kampion, 2003, p.

25). My story is a small part of a much greater social phenomenon that folds into

mainstream culture and communication.

Whether it is through the spread of rhetorical practices like valspeak(dude,

bro, gnarly, radical, etc.) or the establishment of environmental preservation

organizations, surf culture tends to be one of the louder counterculture voices in the

mainstream stir of echoes. As such, the shared meanings and communication practices

within surf culture can hold the potential to influence greater social forces and

mainstream epistemological frameworks. Kampion (2003) claims that

The surf culture that has formed concentric rings around the elemental act of

riding a wave is a unique and strangely powerful phenomenon. It is a subculture

that feeds on the experiences and truths gained in the ocean and on the waves, andit is a subculture that has enormous effects on the larger cultures of which it is a

part. (p. 27)

The present study offers an ethnographic account of one group of southern California

surfers in order to examine the ways that their participation in surf culture provides

opportunities for resistance to the larger cultures of which they are a part. More

specifically, this paper formulates an understanding of the performances and practices of

a group of surfers in southern California and evaluates the potential for those

performances and practices to challenge global capitalism and colonization of the mind.


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Purpose and Significance

The communications discipline is a vast and diverse field of research that

encompasses a variety of quantitative and qualitative research methods. These various

methods are united by a commitment to study human symbolic action in the various

contexts of its performance (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002, p. 6). According to Lindlof and

Taylor, symbolic performances and practices constitute the textures of our everyday

experience and shape the meanings of our relationships in various contexts, which

makes the social construction of meaning virtually indistinguishable from

communication (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002, p. 7). In this sense, a unique understanding

of the shared meanings and rituals within a counterculture like surfing is valuable to the

field of communication research because it reveals the novel ways that surfing

experiences shape collective identity and communication in personal relationships. The

purpose of this paper is to examine the shared meanings and rituals of one group of

surfers in order to evaluate the potential for their surfer lifestyle to achieve spiritual

fulfillment and resist colonization of the mind.

Surf culture is like all other group communication in the sense that it employs

specific styles of communication and modes of behavior familiar to those participating in

it. Specifically, surf culture has a rich history and a unique system of rituals, distinctive

language elements, symbolic elements, a loose tribal hierarchy, and unique lifestyle

characteristics that have been broadly imitated and emulated around the world (Taylor,

2007, p. 929). These shared rituals and meanings are independently fascinating as

cultural artifacts, but they also hold the potential for creativity and change. For example,


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Robert Conneeley described surfing as the ultimate liberating factor on the planet and

Nat Young declared that by the simple act of riding waves, surfers were supporting the

revolution (Booth, 2008, p. 20). More specifically, Taylor agrees with Turners theory

that rituals not only maintain the social order but also sometimes create new social

possibilities, which is equally apropos to the current analysis of surfing subcultures

(Taylor, 2007, p. 932).

One major concern that drives this study is the relentless reign of efficiency in the

everyday. A related concern is the extent to which institutions and forces of

mechanization come to dominate and distort cognitive processes in dangerous ways.

Heidegger expressed such concerns inA Question Concerning Technology(1977),

arguing that the logic of modern technology and Western metaphysics suffered from an

instrumental enframing of the natural world. Enframing involves a stance toward the

world that challenges, regulates, and secures its elements to create a standing reserve

of usable resources (Kinsella, 2007, p. 195). If institutions and forces of mechanization

effectively dominate human modes of being, then all communication could be enframed

in a way that prevents authentic being-in-the-world. The effect is that one-sided

constitutive models of communication are widely understood in ways that legitimate

destructive and dangerous attitudes toward the natural world (Kinsella, 2007, p. 197). As

a result, if it is true that the communicative assemblage attached to surfing supports a

revolution against technological enframing and colonization of the mind, then identifying

the operative components of such communication is important for developing strategies

for collective freedom and happiness.


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This study deploys ethnographic methods to evaluate the following research

questions related to the potential for surfing to be a revolutionary act:

1. Can surfing provoke a frame of mind that resists colonization of the mind?

2. Is surfing characterized by a pre-discursive spiritual experience of

immanence?

Both of these research questions are directed at understanding surfers

communicative behaviors in order to understand the shared meanings that make up their

world view.


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CHAPTER 2

A REVIEW OF THE RELEVANT LITERATURE

This project touches upon several different concepts within surf history,

communication theory and philosophy. For this reason, reviews of the relevant literature

will be organized based on the following conceptual constellations; Surf History,

Colonization of the Mind, andImmanence.

Surf History

It is widely believed that surfing originated thousands of years ago in Peru and

Polynesian culture in the Pacific islands. Although no one knows who first thought of the

idea of using a wood plank to ride a board, by the 1700s European explorers were

witnessing Polynesians surf (Houston & Finney, 2006, p. 21). Hawaiian and Polynesian

surf culture was temporarily silenced by European missionaries in 1820 because the

water sport was associated with nakedness and sexuality, but it experienced a revival in

Hawaii, California and Australia, at the hands of famous adventurers, such as Jack

London and Duke Kahanamoku (Taylor, 2007, p. 928).

The sport exploded in the United States around the end of World War II, gaining

influence in the 1950s and 1960s via a major development of three major historical

narratives. Ford and Brown (2006) argue

The history of surfing is here distilled in terms of the three (sub) narratives of

surfings technological, cultural and performance histories. The core of surfing is,

obviously, the performance of the embodied experience of the ride, slide or dance


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along the wave, the cultural dimension pertains to the significations, images andmotivations which comprise the epiphenomena surrounding surfing and also

influence and style of performance, while the technology of surfboard design

facilitates the possibilities of the dance. (p. 27)

In other words, surfing is a fluid activity that is constantly shaped and re-shaped by

evolutions in performance (changes in style), culture (movies and music) and technology

(board shape and building material). The history of surfing re-writes itself as all three of

these narratives evolve together. With the development of the foam Malibu board in the

late 1950s, technological changes allowed more people to access surfboards. This

coincided with a cultural shift that shoved surfing into the mainstream. Since surfing

was also associated with California, the golden state, the attractions of surfing seemed

overwhelming to the advertising and mass media industries (Ormrod, 2005, p. 40).

Musicians like Dick Dale and the Beach Boys jumped on board and Hollywood

producers sank their teeth into the lifestyle, releasing a string of surf exploitation films

likeFrankie and Annettes Beach Blanket Bingo(1965). The most famous of these films

is Gidget (1959), a story about a young girl in Malibu who challenges misogyny and

proves that girls can surf too. The conjunction of technological breakthroughs and

cultural mainstreaming turned surfing into a major social phenomenon in the blink of an

eye. As curiosity in surfing has proliferated around the world, the meaning and

significance of the activity has splintered. People surf for many different reasons, which

lead them to different conclusions about the meaning of the activity, as well as different

types of communication while engaged in the activity. As surfing has simultaneously


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become a religion, a sport and a multi-billion dollar industry, it has become susceptible to

a variety of theoretical examinations.

Booth (2008) claims that surf culture is separate from the experience of surfing in

a concrete way, such that one can participate in one without participating in the other. For

example, he argues that he enjoys surfing for its physical and psychological benefits,

yet he does not feel a sense of deeply shared cultural bonds with other surfers (Booth,

2008, p. 17). Booth frames his examination of the popular surf magazine, Tracks, against

arguments made by Leanne Stedman and Margaret Henderson that surf magazines

frame the cultural precepts of young surfers (i.e., telling them how to think and act, or

limiting the range of options or alternatives as to how they might think or might act) in

the interests of masculine hegemony (Booth, 2008, p. 17). For Stedman and Henderson,

surf magazines, such as Tracks, create affective experiences for young men that

encourage behavior that is consistent with dominant male power.

Although Booth does not seem to fully defend Tracks, he offers two substantive

rebuttals to the feminist critique. First, Booth argues that the magazines visual

representations of surfing emphasize symmetry in surf style rather than masculine

identity. This is necessary to be appealing to readers, since asymmetry can reveal a lack

of connection with the ocean and the surf and earn the rider the appellation kooka

blithering beginner (Booth, 2008, p. 25). Second, Booth cites Evers, who believes that

surfing disturbs traditional gendered tropes for understanding bodies both in terms of

wipeouts and embodiment in the water (Booth, 2008, p. 31). For Booth and Evers, there


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is no underlying masculinity, no masculinities to define and no definitive male body in

surfing, only sets of embodied relations felt and becoming (Booth, 2008, p. 32).

On the other hand, Ormrod (2005) argues that media representations of surf

culture commodify the activity and encourage a sort of romantic tourism among the

upper class. She claims

Once Europeans began to colonize America, European clerics and academics

began to position the indigenous population as children. The continent was

positioned as the New World as opposed to Europe, the Old World. Theseassociations informed representations of America from the 16th century to the

present and continue to influence contemporary culture to represent of America asa youthful society. (p. 42)

As America internalized these ideas, it came to promote an ideology of youthfulness and

freedom. For Ormrod, surfing has been converted into a product that sustains this

ideology, making consumers feel young, tanned, and free. Even worse, Ormrod claims

that surfing promulgates a tourist ethic that maintains ideological concepts of holiday

and leisure, which maintain structures of capitalism. While Ormrod may be correct that

surfing has become commodified and deployed to support capitalist structures, it remains

an experience that surfers, themselves, characterize in a more meaningful way. The real

question posed by Ormrods critique is whether the commercialization of surf culture and

appropriation of a tourist ideology is so overwhelming and powerful that it forecloses the

potential that surfing holds to resist capitalism. This study answers Ormrods question in

the negative by demonstrating that surfers interpret their experiences in the water as a

challenge to the capitalist ordering of time.


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The shared spiritual experience of surfing has maintained its integrity in the face

of such criticisms. Indeed, Taylor (2007) hypothesizes that the global surfing movement

is giving way to a new and unique aquatic nature religion.

A significant part of the evolving global, surfing world can be understood as anew religious movement in which sensual experiences constitute its sacred center.

These experiences, and the subcultures in which people reflect upon them, foster

understandings of nature as powerful, transformative, healing and even sacred.Such perceptions, in turn, often lead to environmental ethics. (p. 925)

Taylor admits that surf cultures are wide and diverse, even that some are misogynistic.

This does not stop him from asserting that soul surfing uses sacred texts, myths,

symbols, beliefs and practices to sustain its ideology. Indeed, Taylor identifies a

distinctive rhetoric attending surfing that indicates its association with spiritual

experience. Aside from overtly religious rhetoric, such as referring to surfing as going to

church, Taylor indicates that a massive amount of surf writing repeatedly returns to the

experience of wave riding as the sensual center of the practice; and this practice does

what many religions purport to do: transform consciousness and facilitate the

development of an authentic, awakened self (Taylor, 2007, p. 940).

Colonization of the Mind

Marin Heidegger sketched out his basic concern with the logic of technological

enframing in his essay,A Question Concerning Technology(1977). Kinsella (2007)

shows that Heidegger builds on the phenomenological apparatus constructed by Edmund

Husserl to claim that

human beingunderstood by Heidegger as both actor and activityis always

being-in-the world, involving ongoing engagement with other phenomena of thatworld. To be authentically, this engagement requires meeting the world not only


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on our terms, but also on its own terms; only through such meeting can we realizetrue being. (p. 196)

In contrast, technological enframing encourages a way of thinking that first

reduces all non-human beings to a pool of usable resources, and then translates into an

interpretation of human beings themselves as usable resources. Specifically, enframing is

a historical mode of revealing that sums up the possibilities of the technical age

according to the imperatives of ordering, control and efficiency (Belu & Feenberg,

2010, p. 2). Within this ontological mode of enframing, individuality is effectively

suppressed by a system of mind control (Belu & Feenberg, 2010, p. 3). In other words,

enframing ontologically orders our world to confine the possibilities of being to the limits

of efficiency and productivity.

This interpretation of enframing is consistent with postmodern critiques that seek

to understand the operations of colonialism. Scholars such as Molefi Asanti, bell hooks,

Albert Memmi and Uhuru Hotep have developed sophisticated theories of colonization

of the mind that explain how processes of enframing reappropriate the cognitive

resources of black bodies (Asanti, 1999; hooks, 1994). In a more general context, Dascal

(2009) examines the epistemic violence attached to colonization of the mind, as a

situation where an external source with asymmetrical power intervenes into the mental

sphere of a group of subjects and affects central aspects of the minds structure, mode of

operation, and contents (Dascal, 2009, p. 2). This form of control takes place through

the transmission of mental habits and contents by means of social systems other than the

colonial structure (Dascal, 2009, p. 2).


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In other words, social systems like family, traditions, cultural practices, religion,

science, language, fashion, ideology, political regimentation, the media, and education

hold the potential to order our ontological understanding of being (Dascal, 2009, p. 2).

According to Heidegger, these various social systems are informed by the logic of

technology, and encourage modes of being that emphasize control, efficiency and

productivity (Heidegger, 1977). In this sense, social systems can colonize the mind to

direct a beings cognitive resources toward an emphasis on efficiency. This comes to

inform our experience of the everyday and prioritizes dangerous ways of thinking.

Zimmerman (1997) summarized Heideggers concern that a world of human beings over-

determined by technological enframing would be worse than a nuclear apocalypse,

because it would permanently prevent authentic engagement with others and the world.

Giorgio Agamben later used this concept to develop his idea of bare life and sustain a

meaningful critique against biopolitics (Agamben, 1998).

In a similar vein, Kinsella (2007) reflects on the relationship between enframing

and environmental ethics. He argues that Heideggers theory indicates that humans and

the natural environment share a mutually constitutive relationship, consistent with the

feeling expressed by surfers reflecting on the activity (Kinsella, 2007, p. 196).

Unfortunately, for Kinsella, prevailing models of communication fail to recognize the

full complexity of that interdependence (Kinsella, 2007, p. 196). Surfing provides an

alternative model for appreciating the complexity of interdependence. Indeed, Taylor

claims that surfing produces a holistic axiology that environmental ethicists label

biocentrism or ecocentrism. Surfers deep feelings of communion and kinship with the


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non-human animals they encounter . . . can also lead surfers to discrete political action on

behalf of particular species (Taylor, 2007, p. 925).

Immanence

It does not take long analyzing material surf culture or its associated rhetoric to

see its spiritualityinfused nature (Taylor, 2007, p. 924). Surfers tend to describe the

spiritual nature of their experiences in different ways, but those various interpretations

seem to be thematically connected. For example, surf-related writing characterizes the

sport as an opportunity to connect to the environment and become one with the rhythm of

the forces of nature. Taylor (2007) claims that many surfers

talk in mystical terms about being one with the wave and feeling as if . . . they

were no longer spectators in the ocean but part of it. This comes . . . from the totalfocus of energy and attention on the one task of surfing. Its absolutely meditative

. . . surfing makes all the noise of life melt away until it is just a surfer . . . and the

wave in a perfect synchronous dance of life. (p. 937)

As opposed to transcending the physical world, these representations of the surfing

experience signify a feeling of symbiosis and synchronicity. In other words, one major

theme in surf writing is a sense of spirituality derived from an immanent relationship

between all beings.

The concept of immanence, that of remaining within, stands in opposition to the

metaphysical concept of transcendence, which implies subjectivity outside of material

reality. This concept was constructed and elaborated in the philosophical work of Gilles

Deleuze, both as a young thinker and during his partnership with Felix Guattari

(Sinnerbrink, 2006). For Deleuze, consciousness is an event that results from the violent

confrontation of bodies on a plane of immanence (Deleuze, 2001). This stands in


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opposition to a (Kantian) theological concept of consciousness, which is distributed

between a past, i.e., the given order . . . and a future, i.e., the gift of the creator. In

immanence, the product is the creation, a creation distributing the future itself, and this

product is mediated with further creations. Instead of a mediation between two commons,

those belonging to an immanent order of creation and to a transcendent ordering of the

creator, the common is produced and mediated through an immanent act (Barber, 2009,

p. 136). In other words, there is no transcendent creator and no established order to the

universe, only creation itself. Creativity produces difference and this difference is not

merely the relative distinction of one thing from another . . . but is instead a positive

power of pure production. What is constant in the universe is only this continual

production of novelty (Sherman, 2009, p. 3). Absolute immanence holds revolutionary

potential because it exceeds the limits imposed by global capitalism. An experience of

pure immanence is characterized by a sense of lightness and being at one with the here

and now (Nash, 2006, p. 311). Accessing the univocity of desire in this way

deterritorializes desire from the matrix of consumption, so it instead becomes a lived

reality of relational connectivity, of continuous nomadic and rhizomatic becomings

(Nash, 2006, p. 316). It is complete power, complete bliss (Deleuze, 2001).

Based on this understanding of immanence, Deleuze argues for a transcendental

empiricism, which attempts to understand human experience as a collision, or

disruption, upon a larger field of indiscernibility. Deleuze warns against attributing

immanence to a universal subject or act, for then it simply redoubles the empirical, and

immanence is distorted, for it then finds itself enclosed in the transcendent (Deleuze,


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2001). Elevating concepts or experiences to the transcendent field converts them into a

mediating force, a door through which all other meaning must travel. This, in turn, allows

limits to be placed on our thinking and creativity.

Most of the theoretical literature about immanence is restricted to religious

journals, manifested by heated discussions about the implications that immanence poses

for theological thought. For example, Daniel Barber (2009) claims that contemporary

critiques of Deleuze concept of immanence overlook his accompanying re-definition of

time, or chronos, as well as his distinction between virtual and actual, which accounts for

a material explanation of creation rather than a mystical one. Barber argues that accepting

Deleuze interpretations reveals an ontological dimension of production that would be

prior to capital (Kerr, 2009, p. 145). In the same periodical, Nathan Kerr (2009) offers a

rebuttal to Barbers hypothesis, claiming that theological theory and practice is not

necessarily transcendent, but in themselves hold the possibility of immanence. Kerr

prefers to claim that the Christian ethic can be immanent, rather than defending the merits

of transcendence.

Deleuze concept of immanence is a theory that drives this study for two main

spiritual reasons. First, communicative practices surrounding surfing frequently

characterize the experience as spiritually fulfilling, yet distinguishable from traditional

religious experiences. Indeed, increasing numbers of surfers are skeptical or agnostic

about most, if not all particular religious beliefs, and find sufficient resources in surfing,

and within surfing communities, to construct meaningful spiritual lives (Taylor, 2007, p.

945). While reflecting on the activity of surfing in a recent surf documentary, Step into


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Liquid, one professional surfer says, Its like falling in love. You dont know what the

feeling is until youve felt it. Thats what being able to face a challenge, and to live a

dream and to feel the energy and to experience the beauty and to get spat out in glory,

while another recites Timothy Learys hypothesis that the highest destiny of man on

earth was to live an aesthetic life based on the dance, and that surfers had discovered

this. One surf writer explains that surfing is not about achievement. It is about balance,

blend and unity. It is about being a part of, not about dictating or ruling it. The Zen of

surfing is about being mindful of the energy you are joining forces with, not conquering

it (Taylor, 2007, p. 936).

Second, immanence is important because Deleuze and Guattari position

immanence outside of global capitalism. It is not a matter of whether immanence can

provide something unconditioned by or exterior to given determinations. The

fundamental terrain is not exteriority itself; rather, it is the viability of respective

articulations of exteriority (Barber, 2009, p. 133). In other words, capitalism uses the

logic of transcendence to constantly displace its own limits. In contrast, immanence is

no longer dependent on a Being or submitted to an Act . . . it is an absolute immediate

consciousness (Deleuze, 1995, p. 28). For Deleuze and Guattari, capitalism continues by

controlling the production of desire within the social field. Here, immanence as

immediate consciousness deterritorializes desire so that it cannot be used by capitalism.

This study aims to evaluate the potential for surfing to articulate a position of exteriority

to capitalism.


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CHAPTER 3

METHODS

An Interpretive Framework for Understanding Surf Culture

This study represents an ethnographic analysis of a particular group of surfers

within southern California surf culture and is grounded in the traditions of interpretive

research and the social construction of meanings (cf. Berger & Luckmann, 1966;

Bochner, 1985; Della-Piana & Anderson, 1995; Eisenberg, 1986; Grossberg, 1979;

Trujillo, 1992), as cited by Ruud (2000, p. 118). Contemporary human communication

research is grounded by a variety of mutually exclusive theoretical traditions, each of

which is based on a set of assumptions related to ontology, epistemology, human nature

and methodology. It is difficult, if not impossible, to compare conclusions from different

approaches because they rest on fundamentally different assumptions. While quantitative

research methods are concerned with measuring a directly observable world, qualitative

research methods are primarily concerned with revealing the different ways that meaning

is assigned within our subjective understandings. As such, analysis of surfers

understanding of their own positioning within broader surf culture allows communication

researchers to understand the coherency, purpose, and particular pattern of symbolic

action that functions to bond . . . members in some meaningful and lasting way (Ruud,

2000, p. 119).


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The interpretive paradigm assumes that reality is socially constructed rather than

made up of tangible and immutable structures (Burrell & Morgan, 1979, p. 4). This

paradigm accepts that critical social science is a normative, practical, ethical and

political endeavor. It aims to develop theory and practice that reveals distortions in

individual and public discourse and action that serve to maintain systems of oppression

(Reyes Cruz, 2010, p. 203). In other words, social science research is situated in a web of

relationships, cultures and flows. Recognizing that position is important for valuable

research because it forces reflection about how subjective interpretations come together

to form shared meaning. For example, by reflecting upon the researchers presence at a

site of investigation, ethnographers can begin to construct theories and concepts that take

their intersubjective interpretation of meaning into account (Anderson, 2006, p. 384).

When taken together, these elements justify this studys examination of shared meanings

and the liberating potential underlying surfing experiences.

A fundamental premise guiding this study is a concern with understanding surf

culture and its relation to colonization of the mind. Specifically, culture is understood as

a product and process, an ongoing social construction that speaks of the ways in which

we learn to live and make sense of life (Reyes Cruz, 2010, p. 205). The methods and

assumptions of the interpretive framework provide for an understanding of culture that is

always shifting and partial. The interpretive paradigm is essential to the success of this

study because it allows a situated approach that extracts potent revolutionary potential out

of specific experiences of nine individuals within surf culture.


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Ethnographic Assumptions and Methodology

This study relies upon general principles of ethnographic research as a

methodology for interpretation because it involves an investigation of how one group of

surfers come to shared ideological meaning. Indeed, ethnography of communication is

intended to understand cultural codes, which Lindlof and Taylor describe as rules that

inform cultural members how to use and interpret particular categories of signs (Lindlof

& Taylor, 2002). Ethnography is concerned with the relationship between social practices

and social structure. The research questions at issue in this study fall squarely within the

purview of ethnography because they ask whether spiritual codes influence social

practices and social structure among surfers both inside and outside of the water. My goal

as a researcher in this study is to inscribe social discourse to understand the various

meanings associated with the experience of surfing and examine their potential for

resistance (Geertz, 1973, p. 19). However, it must be noted that this studys findings are

not universal. After all, ethnographic findings are not privileged, just particular: another

country heard from. To regard them as anything more (or anything less) than that distorts

both them and their implications (Geertz, 1973, p. 23).

The success of ethnography involves describing and interpreting observed

relationships between social practices and the systems of meaning in a particular cultural

milieu (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002, p. 16). This is because it is through the flow of

behavior . . . that cultural forms find articulation (Geertz, 1973, p. 17). By observing

behavior and participating in the scene, ethnographers obtain specific insights that have

relevance in the larger social field. Only by living an experience . . . can a qualitative


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researcher make that experience useful to a reader (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002, p. 4). This

is important for understanding communication practices and performances. However, the

value of ethnographic research stands next to a common critique of ethnographic

methods, in that researchers are not mindful of their own position in the field and

represent their findings with an objectivity that does not pay fidelity to their partial

subjective experience (Anderson, 2006, p. 376). Indeed, Anderson claims that responsible

analytic ethnographies include (1) complete member researcher status, (2) analytic

reflexivity, (3) narrative visibility of the researchers self, (4) dialogue with informants

beyond the self, and (5) commitment to theoretical analysis (Anderson, 2006, p. 378).

As an active member of southern California surf culture, I admit that my

understanding of the activity is deeply informed by my personal history. I frequently

experience a different frame of mind and a sense of spiritual fulfillment when I surf. The

activity is very meaningful for me because it has preserved and enhanced my closest

relationships with friends and family. These personal experiences might explain why I

find the surf scene to be a fascinating area of study. I have a personal interest in

understanding how my surfing experiences relate to those of other surfers because they

constitute a significant dimension of my relationships with them. However, I also

understand that my status as a member of the culture means that I ran the risk of

approaching this study with preconceptions of what social meanings I would find

(Ruud, 2000, p. 120). My most difficult challenge in this study was approaching the

research with openness to the text. In order to be honest in my expression of the findings

of this research, I provide a personal reflection on the context of my relationship with


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surfing before conducting this study, as well as a reflection on how the research process

changed my understanding of the meanings that surfers attribute to the activity.

Elements of surf culture are manifested in a variety of different contexts, but my

attention was directed at the spiritual and mental conditions associated with the

experience of surfing. In particular, I paid special attention to the ways that individual

surfers described the spiritual and mental contours of their surfing experience. The

project took place between January and May, 2011. Data related to both theoretical

questions were gathered through audio-recorded ethnographic interviews at a location

that was amenable to surfing. I conducted a total of nine ethnographic interviews with

surfers in and around southern California, yielding approximately twelve hours of total

recorded interview time. Some of the interviews were recorded in the water while

participants were surfing. Other interviews were conducted on or around the beach at a

variety of southern California locations.

The ethnographic interviews were free-form, allowing novel responses to shape

the conversation. Each interview lasted between 30 and 90 minutes, and interview

participants were chosen based on their willingness to speak with me. Once the data was

collected, the interviews were transcribed and coded according to the themes that relate to

this studys research questions. To identify any thematic similarities, interview data was

juxtaposed with recorded interviews of professional surfers in surf documentaries (Riding

Giantsand Step into Liquid), as well as theoretical research. Procedurally, there was a

searching out of significant symbols, clusters of significant symbols, and clusters of

clusters of significant symbols which, in their formation, serve to define and distinguish


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different forms of human experience (Geertz, 1973, p. 303) (Ruud, 2000, p. 121). These

methods provided a unique opportunity to analyze a variety of different interpretations in

order to extract any shared spiritual meaning and/or potential for resisting colonization of

the mind that surfing holds.


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CHAPTER 4

FINDINGS

Surfing as Context

American surf culture emerged as a counterculture to the mainstream values and

traditions of the 1950s. Around this time, a small group of soul surfers eschewed their

material possessions and place in mainstream culture, opting instead for an ocean-based

nomadic lifestyle. With a devotion to riding waves came the creation of a new lifestyle,

centered around all things beach. This emerging lifestyle went in direct opposition to

mainstream values. Surfers were regarded as nothing more than beach bums (Brown,

2003). Because of the perception that they did not contribute to the mainstream

productive and efficient lifestyle, surfers were originally outcast by society. Bruce

Brown, director of the worlds most famous surf movie, The Endless Summer, indicates

that, in the 1950s, surfers were characterized as uncultured BOZOS. He claims that

the main comment from parents and non-surfing peers was: when you grow up, youll

realize you were wasting your time when you could have been doing something useful

(Kampion, 2003, p. 23). This also came to shape surfers own self identification. In

Riding Giants, Steve Pezman comments that getting radical was part of the culture at

that time. After a while it was expected of us and we fulfilled those expectations

(Peralta, 2004). In this way, mainstream culture represented surfers as unconcerned

pleasure seekers, but this representation could not capture the sophistication of their


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lifestyle. Getting rich wasnt important. What was important was having the freedom to

do what we wanted. It didnt mean we didnt take our jobs or professions seriously . . . it

meant keeping things in perspective (Kampion, 2003, p. 23). Taylor (2007) further

explains

It was during the 1960s that surfings spiritual revival intensified as it fused with

new religious and political currents, blending anti-establishment and anti-hierarchal attitudes with holistic metaphysics that were connected to psychedelics,

religions originating in Asia or found in indigenous societies, Americas own

metaphysical traditions, and neo-Paganism. (p. 931)

Terms like soul surfer and moondoggie continue to be used within

contemporary surf culture to describe those that seem to faithfully live the surfer lifestyle.

In fact, the term moondoggie originates from the name of a laid-back surfer in the

movie Gidget. Moondoggie has no job and no social obligations. He lives in a palm frond

lean-to on the beach in Malibu and spends his life surfing and commiserating with others

in the water. The Moondoggie character is a symbol for the idea that surfing wasnt just

something you did, but something you became. Not just a sport, but a statement (Peralta,

2004).

Moondoggies still exist, but surfing has changed dramatically since the birth of

the counterculture in the 1950s. Ford and Brown are right that remarkable changes in

style, culture and technology mutated surfing from a form of local nomadic hedonism

into a professional sport and multi-billion dollar industry by the late 1980s (Ford &

Brown, 2006, p. 30). The sport has grown to such an extent that the incentives to

participate have expanded and multiplied. In other words, the reasons why people surf

change as surf culture itself changes. Surfers approach the activity for the first time for


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different reasons, ranging from simple opportunity to competitiveness and fun.

Participant interviews support this finding, notably because each participant vocalized

different reasons for surfing for the first time. Their personal stories provide context for

understanding their experiences as southern California surfers.

Robby is now 58 years old, and regularly surfs with his family in southern

California. Although he has fully developed an ocean-minded spirituality, he was

originally drawn to the activity as an escape from a violent home life and an opportunity

for fun with friends. Mike, 26, shared Robbys initial attraction to the sport over a decade

ago. He says that he was originally enticed to surf by the good stories of good times, and

it didnt seem like something he could pass up. In contrast, Andrew, 27, lives in the San

Francisco bay area and has been surfing for seven years. He says he originally started

surfing in southern California simply because he was provided the opportunity by his

friends. This is similar to Teddy, 24, who started surfing because of the social aspects of

the sport. Teddy generally feels that he needs other people to be rejuvenated and that the

social experience is a big part of his desire to surf.

Teddy also claims that he was drawn to surfing because it seemed like it was a

lifestyle, like chillness, mellow. Teddy originally desired the laid-back attitude

associated with surfing, but his brother, Gary, came to the activity for very different

reasons. Gary, 22, has been surfing since he was 9 years old. In contrast to his brother,

Gary was originally drawn to surfing because he has a lot of friends who are really

good and he wants to be really good like they are. Many surfers share Garys

competitive motivations and believe that they achieve a sense of personal victory from a


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successful surf session. Charlie, 27, says that the most fun part about it is the success

and failure part of it. Whether you have a great day or not, you get out there and youre

doing something that you can accomplish and it feels great. After getting out of the

water, Charlie is proud of his ability to put forth the physical effort that it takes to surf.

A lot of people arent willing to do it. A lot of people arent even willing to paddle out

or sit in that break . . . a lot of people dont have the coordination to get there . . . its a

million different things where, if you can accomplish them, its a great day.

Robby, Mike, Andrew, Teddy, Gary and Charlie have all surfed long enough to

develop their own unique perspectives on surfing. As informants on surfing and surf

culture, these six individuals represent a range of attitudes and ideologies that construct

social meaning among surfers. They do not represent the beliefs of all surfers, but their

stories, taken together, provide a foundation for understanding how different experiences

in the ocean can be thematically connected. Studying those thematic connections is

critical to evaluating their revolutionary potential.

Surfing and Decolonization of the Mind

Surfers are quick to point out that the frame of mind they inhabit while surfing is

different from the frame of mind they inhabit in their everyday lives. More specifically,

each and every informant for this study has a job and personal relationships that must be

maintained for them to actively participate in mainstream capitalist society. Surfers are

not completely outside of mainstream culture, which means that their everyday

experiences are steeped in the logic of technological enframing. Enframing is not

simply a widespread problem we could solve with appropriate remedies, but the


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underlying structure of being in our time. It is ontological rather than ontic (Belu &

Feenberg, 2010, p. 2). Surfers are pressured by forces of mechanization and the

domination of efficiency as an ordering principle in their lives. However, surfers feel that

they extract a variety of meaningful forms of resistance to enframing from their surfing

mindset. Specifically, the data suggests that the mindset that surfers inhabit while surfing

holds the potential to (1) cause one to forget about the everyday, (2) ignore productivity

and efficiency, (3) enhance ones relationship to nature, (4) mutate ones sense of time,

and (5) create a sense of potentiality or feeling right.

The first meaning associated with the frame of mind of surfing is that of

forgetting about the everyday. As noted in the literature review, by combining

Heideggers theory of enframing with Dascals interpretation of colonization of the

mind, a persuasive argument could be made that our minds are colonized by an

emphasis on productivity and efficiency. Examples 1a, 1b and 1c demonstrate ways in

which participants feel that they are ordered by forces of mechanization:

Example 1a: I feel a need to be productive. Like, I need to get things done. When

Im surfing, I amdone. I dont feel like I have to accomplish anything out there.

Example 1b: Especially in California. Its constantly trying to move faster, do

things more efficiently. Hurry, hurry, hurry up and get this thing done so we can

move on to this next thing, and then this thing. It drives me crazy. I cant stand the

rat race.

Example 1c: Being on land as a mental state is just like the daily grind.

Everything you do in your life happens on land and if you have a stressful busy

life, like I do, thats being on land. Going to work, going to school, having to deal

with all this crap.


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It is notable that participants characterize mechanization, efficiency and

colonization of the mind as the mental state of being on land. This symbolic

maneuver positions efficiency as a characteristic that only applies to modes of being out

of the water and supports the position that surfing can reveal new ways of thinking. In the

following example, Gary connects the concept of colonization of the mind to

enframing, and explains why surfing provides an escape:

In the definition of colonization or imperialism, where theres a group of peoplethat comes in and takes a bunch of resources and allocates them to themselves,

they take them from other people and other people that need them or have grownup with them. So, if my mind has resources, like it has energy, or has the capacity

to think or to spend time on problems, theyre colonized by blocks of time and bywork, school, job, you know, just like all of these different compartments, each

compartment steals one piece of my cognitive resources. So when I go into the

water, and everything is right, then, I guess, thats what is melting away, all ofthose different methods of control over my cognitive resources.

Garys poetic description is simply one way of characterizing ones ability to

forget about the every day. Other surfers attribute this frame of mind to a struggle for

survival or a return to animal instincts. Andrew explains that surfing takes his mind off of

work and relationships and family stress because hes more worried about getting past

the break and not drowning. Teddy is more explicit, claiming that the disconnect frame

of mind is the main reason why he surfs. He says, To sum up the feeling, that rush [of

paddling through a wave] sort of strips everything away, getting back to that animal

instinct, strips everything but that, right now. This is thematically similar to Charlies

perspective that, while surfing may not be a specific challenge to systems of domination,

it is an escape, because when youre out there, you can focus on what youre doing and


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you can, theres so much going on that you can unplug in a sense . . . you can feel elated,

for however brief a moment.

In addition to forgetting about the every day, participants also explain how their

frame of mind in the water allows them to actively ignore the values of productivity and

efficiency. The following exchange illustrates how surfing promotes a contemplative

mindset:

SURFER: Right. And I think surfing is as much a concept of the sport as it is theperformance of the sport. I know that when I can conceptualize surfing, and my

mantra when I get out and Im having a shit day and I cant catch anything, islike, Picture it, and get there. Picture being on the wave and seeing the open

spaces and seeing the opportunities to gain speed and to make turns and then getthere and do it because if you dont do that then you are just going to spend the

rest of the day paddling through set after set being pissed.

ME: Thats actually really fascinating to me, the whole idea of making your

reality with your mind, especially in the context of surfing. Is there something

unique about surfing that allows you to do that? Is that harder to do for youpersonally in other parts of your life?

SURFER: Absolutely, because with other sports, even other extreme sports orboard sports. In snowboarding, you have the opportunity to practice things ad

nauseum. You could go and hit a jump a thousand times as fast as you can climb

the hill and hit it again, so you dont have as much of an opportunity to sit and

think about it. Whereas the intervals of waves and your dependency on the whimsof nature kind of make it necessary for you to sit and think about it. Its more of a

contemplative sport than other sports.

Mikes position agrees with this explanation. He believes that surfing serves as a

reminder to slow down in this fast paced world that we live in. A lot of times you really

do need to stop and smell the roses per se, and be reminded of the little good things and

the little fun you can have . . . just to really calm down and reflect. The demand to


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ignore the values of efficiency provoked by surfing may also be related to the

unpredictability of swells:

I know when I have a really good workout at the gym, I still dont really escape

things. You know, Im still staying within the hour and a half I planned, Im still

regimented. When Im out in the water, it usually happens on a day, and I thinkthis is a benefit of not living at the beach. In that mindset, you have to set aside a

lot of time to do it. You know when you get down there, even if the conditions are

bad you have to sit out in the water and take it in, spend hours doing it, and itsnot all productive. When youre at the gym, its all productive. Youre doing

dumbbell curls and its all productive. Youre doing reps, you might take a minute

to rest, but when youre in the water, there is no guarantee of anyproductivity.

Indeed, surfers are not guaranteed good rides on any given day in the water.

Waves are shifting and elusive, which makes them difficult to incorporate into a system

of mechanization and control. In other words, it is difficult for the logic of technology to

enframe waves as a pool of usable resources because they only partially exist in a

dynamic cosmic flow. Riding waves is not like doing reps at a gym. More importantly, it

is difficult to technologize waves as a standing reserve for human use.

Just to use the example of snowboarding again, when you go up on a mountain

and youre getting ready to board, its not really like you are on a mountain. Its

been groomed and laid out. What makes it interesting is the man made jumps, the

resort owners modifications of that nature. But when you get out to surf, the onlyreally man made modifications are, say youre at the wedge or something, but

thats not the aim. Youre not going to Bells beach because someone dredged it

and dumped a bunch of sand at the bottom of the ocean to make a good wave,because, in reality, that wave only lasts a few cycles. You go out to experience a

moment of chaos. You go out to experience dissidence. Its not like you know

what you expect. You hope for something good, you hope for good waves, youalways do. But most often, the response from surfers is, when theyre asked the

question, how were the waves? they respond, it was fun, and thats the

greatest praise you can give a session.

National land locked water parks like Water World and the Schlitterbahn feature

man made wave pools that may undercut Garys analysis here, but it is also questionable


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whether those wave pools can replicate the sense of chaos and dissidence Gary

associates with natural ocean waves.

A relationship to the rhythm of the waves is only one component of the

environmental ethic that the surfing mindset provokes. Connecting with natureis perhaps

the most common praise that surfers express when reflecting on the activity. A sense of

belonging to nature in general and the sea in particular represents an important affective

dimension to the surfing experience. When such feeling incubated in the environmental

age, it inspired environmentalist values and action among some surfers (Taylor, 2007, p.

937). This emphasis is consistent with the perspectives of participants in this study.

Andrew clearly states that, for me, its a nature thing. If Im on a hike, or out camping,

or surfing, all of those things allow me to get lost in the moment. Gary agrees:

I am in an eco-criticism class right now, and we are talking about the differentwaves of eco-criticism. We started with this idea of mans dominion over nature,

and thats how all the literature about nature started. Then we moved to a

symbiotic relationship with nature where we were with nature. And then, in thepost-humanist stage, in post-humanism, we moved to this point where there really

is no divide. Why cant I speak for nature? Why cant I be part of it? Surfing is a

return or a movement towards that post-humanist kind of idea. I feel like I am an

otter when I am out there, Im not hitting man made jumps. Im not waiting in linewith a bunch of other guys to get up on a mountain. Im out surfing. I may be

surfing on a man-made board, but you sense less of a divide between yourself and

the ecosystem.

This approach to it encourages one to encounter the world on its own terms, rather

than viewing nature as manageable resources. After all, following Heidegger, the

reduction of nature to a standing reserve alienates us not only from the elements of our

environment, but also, in a fundamental existential sense, from our very being (Kinsella,

2007, p. 196).


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In addition to ignoring efficiency and promoting environmental ethics, some

surfers believe that surfing provokes a frame of mind that mutates their sense of time

from a rigid, ordered reality, into a rhythm with the sea. Teddy says that surfing mutates

his sense of time because he is frequently out there without a watch. Mike believes

surfing is a good counter to technology because instead of being connected to everyone

all the time with the cell phone and email, you are completely disconnected from

everything in the water. Aside from the absence of clocks and cell phones, surfers

frequently describe their surfing experience temporally. In an interview for Surfer

magazine, professional surfer Gerry Lopez claimed that to be truly successful at riding

a wave were approaching a Zen state of mind . . . and youre in the pure moment

(Taylor, 2007, p. 941). Taylors own research on surf culture showed that there are

certain patterns reflected in the reports of surfers about their experience. This is certainly

true when surfers recall dangerous surfing, especially inside the hollow part of a breaking

wave, an experience that can relativize ones sense of time (Taylor, 2007, p. 942). As

such, a shift in ones perspective of time challenges the speed of technological enframing,

even if only for a moment.

Finally, surfers appreciate the frame of mind that they inhabit while surfing

because it represents a state of potentiality, or feeling right.This potentiality promotes

a state of being that is ontologically different from technological enframing. The

following example demonstrates how the modes of being associated with surfing create

an access point for this potentiality, a poetic and artistic dance with other beings:


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Once you get into a rhythm with something you sink into that state of pure being,you know? When you get into that sense, its one thing. But then, theres another

step to surfing, because you are still considering things, unlike running. If youre

running on a treadmill or out in space, all youre considering is survival, mayberounding the next corner. But when youre surfing, you are in that state of near

exhaustion, paddling and getting all your energy out, but youre also concerned

with, where do I go, how do I turn my performance into an art, how do I getbetter at doing what Im doing? You are going from the everyday mindset to that

state of survival, pure being, and then you go above that to kind of, to a state of

unconcerned artistry. Like, youre unconcerned with whats outside and whatsgoing on.

For Gary, surfing encourages an attunement to artistic and poetic being that he

describes as a state of pure being. This artistic mode is certainly a possibility of surfing,

but it depends on several different contingencies to work out favorably. After all,

enjoyable surfing is dependent on the movement of the waves and the skill to navigate

them successfully. If all of these contingencies succeed for Gary, then he can access a

moment of pure being that escapes his everyday concerns.

Soul Surfing and Immanence

As noted in the introduction, a shared sense of spiritual fulfillment has come to

characterize surfing and color the personalities of its players. This explains why many

popular surf myths and rituals emphasize spiritual significance. Although the experience

is always deeply personal, surf-related media like Surfer Magazine and The Endless

Summerconsistently reflect upon the ocean-based spiritual meaning that is shared among

surfers. Surfing spirituality is, moreover, expressed through a variety of ritualized

behaviors, including the construction of aesthetic embellishment of the materials needed

for the practice (Taylor, 2007, p. 938). Here, Taylor is referring to the process of

meditating before a surf session or adorning surfboards with spiritual symbols. Although


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rituals are heavily used throughout surf culture, it is important to note that not all surfers

share the same spiritual and/or religious ideologies, despite the fact that their spiritual

experiences may be thematically connected through surfing. Overlapping similarities and

differences give rise to a unique blend of values and assumptions. The result of such

diversity and hybridity within surfing subcultures is an evolving and transmogrifying

form of an aquatic nature religion (Taylor, 2007, p. 945).

Robby has been surfing for almost 50 years. He says that his spiritual experiences

surfing have influenced his relationships and attuned him to the rhythm of the cosmos.

He frequently refers to the beach as church and constantly reminds his family to

cremate him and spread his ashes at Percos State Beach after he dies. When asked to

elaborate on what he means by the phrase, surfing is church, his only response is that

it is religion. By living the life of surfing, Robby embodies a subset of the surfing

community that experiences the practice in spiritual terms, deriving meaning and

important life lessons from it, even understanding it as a religion in and of itself. These

people sometimes call themselves soul surfers (Taylor, 2007, p. 926).

The term soul surfer, on its own, is dynamic. It was originally used stylistically,

to describe the type of riding practiced by noncommercial, noncompetitive surfers

(Warshaw, 2005, p. 552). By the end of the 1970s, the term evolved as the catchall

opposition philosophy to professional surfing, which encompassed not only prize-money

competition, but much of the surf industry and surf media (Warshaw, 2005, p. 552). The

Ultimate Guide to Surfingoffers a different interpretation, answering that it is a

powerful, elemental activity that surfers indulge in for the pure act of riding on a pulse


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of natures energy, and the contentment this instills in the heart. In this account, surfing

brings magic that only comes from spending time on the moving canvas (Moriarty &

Gallagher, 2001, p. 73, 75) . . . the key is how the experience connects the surfer to

nature, its energies, and its wild creatures (Taylor, 2007, p. 926). The instability of the

term soul surfer can make it a confusing descriptor for shared spiritual meaning within

surf culture. This does not mean that such shared meaning does not exist, but rather that it

is symbolically represented in different ways.

The participants in this study expressed a number of different interpretations of

the meaning of soul surfing, while at the same time sharing some of the assumptions of

spiritual immanence. For example, Charlie believes that soul surfing describes that

group of people that really take it to the next level . . . they use [surfing] for a way of life

and they use it to dictate every single thing that goes into their life. In other words, it

seems that Charlie associates soul surfing with the attitude that surfers carry out of the

water, into their daily lives. This is qualitatively different from Mikes interpretation that

soul surfing is about gaining, or existing in these moments while you are surfing and . . .

gaining moments of introspection. For Mike, soul surfing is better characterized by the

philosophical insights that sometimes come to surfers while they are in the water. Like

Warshaw, Gary tends to interpret soul surfing stylistically, as a thoughtful and mellow

way of riding waves. For Gary, soul surfing carries negative connotations because the

style that it represents seems to conflict with his own competitive, short-board style.

Despite the fact that surfers interpret soul surfing in a variety of ways, some symbolic


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patterns emerged when they were asked to reflect on the spiritual significance of their

own surfing experiences.

Specifically, participants identified at least three distinct areas of spiritual

significance related to their surfing experience: (1) a connection to a higher power, (2) a

blissful experience of chaos, or supreme fiction, and (3) a sense of connectedness with

all beings, human and non-human. Although shaded differently in various subcultures,

each of these three meanings is frequently communicated by surfers around the world as

part of the spiritual significance of their craft.

For some surfers, the immense power of the ocean presents an opportunity to

experience intensity and a connection to a higher power. Teddy says, You gotta realize

you cant just fight the higher power, you can swim and battle it but its stronger than

you. Theres a power that you cant fight, so you have to go with it, you have to learn

how to just go with the flow. For Teddy, a lack of control is one of the defining parts of

any spiritual experience. The following example expands Teddys comments:

Its part of a higher power because the ocean is a representation of a higherpower, because its such a force to be reckoned with, it does so many things, its

such a powerful force . . . its enough to make you realize, wow that is so

powerful. Also, what comes with the spirituality, I think is a moral code, and the

surfer ethic is that moral code, so it is definitely spiritual. Spiritual experiences. . . should guide you in how you interact with other people and how you respond

to the world and your thoughts. Its knowing humbling things too, with the whole

higher power. Were at the top of the food chain but were not at the top of thefood chain.

Teddys interpretation is sophisticated because it demands a respect for a higher

power while still allowing one to interact with it. Teddy believes that the higher power of

the ocean is something that he cant necessarily control, and yet he interacts with that


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power. After all, there would be no surfing without the embodiment of a higher power in

the waves. Charlies expression of his own spiritual experiences is similar to Teddys, in

that he believes the ocean is the most powerful force on the planet. However, as Teddy

alluded to a moral code derived from surfing spirituality, Charlie deploys his relationship

to the higher ocean power as an analogy for life:

In life, thats just the way things go. You know, there are a lot of things that go

without your control and if you can just hold on and ride it and work it to your

advantage, like working a wave, youll have the most jubilant experience youveever had in your life, and that probably means a lot for why surfing is so

appealing to a lot of people. When you have that kind of triumph, whether it be inlife or in the water, it is very freeing . . . the soul surfers that do it on a daily basis

feel it constantly.

Although both Teddy and Charlies spiritual experiences derive from their

relationship to a higher power, the meaning of that relationship is slightly different

between them. Teddy posits that his relationship to a higher power instills a moral code

for his interactions with other people, both in and out of the water. In contrast, Charlies

relationship to a higher power allows him to navigate the intensities of life more

creatively on an individual level.

Aside from the interpretation of the ocean as a higher power, some surfers

approach the meaning of the intensity and rhythm of the sea in a slightly more abstract

fashion. Specifically, some surfers extract spiritual meaning from a blissful confrontation

with chaos. In the following example, Gary uses the work of Wallace Stevens to describe

this confrontation:

Wallace Stevens is a poet. He had this whole theory about supreme fiction. He

was an atheist who believed that God was replaced by poetry because poetryrepresented this supreme fiction, the state of potentiality, the idea that if you could


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exist in a mindset, then thats all you need. If you can exist in the moment ofchaos that is created by a poem, or thinking about surfing, if you can think about

being between spaces, then you can learn to experience the supernatural.

Gary likens the state of supreme fiction with the beauty of living in a state of

uncertainty. He comments that, when I think about the vastness of uncertainty . . . all of

this contention excites me. This characterization aligns very well with Deleuze and

Guattaris move to celebrate the irrationality and radical uncertainty of the universe as a

source of creativity as desiring production, whether it be expressed in science, poetry,

music or love (Nash, 2006, p. 325). In fact, for Gary, the potentiality of pure being

associated with surfing is also mirrored in his non-surfing religious pursuits. This may

explain why Gary feels just as bad not surfing as he does not going to church.

One of the most common spiritual meanings associated with surfing involves a

sense of connectedness with all beings, human and non-human. Indeed, Taylor notes that

much of the spiritual experience of surfing is also related to a feeling of belonging and

communion with other living things, the earth, and even the universe itself, as well as a

perception that such connections are transformative and healing (Taylor, 2007, p. 943).

As noted above, Taylor believes that this connectedness promotes an environmental ethic

and respect for nature.

Sometimes, this sense of connectedness comes from ones relationship to the

waves themselves. A surfer feels waves and rides with them, not simply on them; it is

an exchange in which waves wash over me until I do not know where I begin and the

wave ends. My body extends to being part of the complexity of the wave (Booth, 2008,

p. 24). This interpretation is consistent with Deleuze and Guattaris concept of


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things flow together. The conversation at Huntington State beach, as well as Charlies

comments about Zen, both align with Taylors argument that for many surfers, the heart

of the spirituality is in their felt connection to Mother Ocean and the energies of the

universe (Taylor, 2007, p. 944).

A relationship to a higher power, a blissful confrontation with chaos and a sense

of connectedness to the universe are only three constellations of spiritual meaning that

surfers attribute to their experience riding waves. This does not mean that there are not a

multitude of additional interpretations within surf culture. Rather, it means that these

three themes are important for understanding how one particular group of surfers came to

interpret the significance of their experiences. The poetic language, passion and reverent

care displayed by participants when discussing this issue indicate that spiritual meaning

plays a major role in their active participation in surf culture. Finally, each of these

interpretations is consistent with the qualities of immanence, in the sense that they derive

spiritual significance from a mode of being within.


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CHAPTER 5

DISCUSSION

A central principle guiding this study is a desire to understand the mental and

spiritual contours of surfing, as experienced by a particular group of southern California

surfers. Lindlof and Taylors claim that symbolic performances and practices constitute

the textures of our everyday experience and shape the meanings of our relationships in

various contexts, (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002, p. 7) underscores the importance of

understanding how actors attribute meaning to their experiences and discursively share

those meanings with others in the social field. In other words, surfing is a deeply personal

experience that simultaneously operates as the ideological center of an aquatic nature

religion and a counterculture lifestyle. As such, it holds a number of shared meanings

that could be deployed as a form of resistance against colonization of the mind. This

decolonizing standpoint is a transdisciplinary and political stance grounded in critical

social theories and methodologies, intended to understand and expose the continuing

legacy of coloniality (Reyes-Cruz, 2011, p. 211). An examination of the literature

indicates that technological enframing and global capitalism are operative components in

the continuing legacy of colonization (Kinsella, 2007; Belu & Feenberg, 2010; Dascal,

2009; Kerr, 2009; Barber, 2009, p. 137). Therefore, this study examines the social

construction of meanings within surf culture to determine whether the mindset associated


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with surfing challenges colonization of the mind, and whether surfing is characterized by

a pre-discursive spiritual experience of immanence.

Colonization of the Mind

One major concern that drives this study is the relentless reign of efficiency in the

every day. Following Heideggers Question Concerning Technology(1977), the

development and evolution of technological enframing ontologically orders our being at a

fundamental level. As a result, our minds are colonized by the epistemic authority of a

capitalist metanarrative (Dascal, 2009, p. 3). This narrative frames human existence

within the modes of efficiency and productivity, determines our relationship with other

beings in the world, and alienates us from the radical otherness of the phenomena that

surround us (Kinsella, 2007, p. 196). Ethnographic data from this study supports these

claims. Indeed, participants in this study frequently characterized their everyday

experience as a rat race or a daily grind. Interviews with participants revealed a

general frustration with the speed of technological enframing. However, every participant

believed that their experiences surfing provided an escape, if not an outright challenge, to

this colonization. One participant even described enframing as the mental state of being

on land. Surprisingly, participants identified a variety of active components of surfing

that provided them an escape from technological enframing and colonization of the mind.

In the specific context of a particular group of southern California surfers, the

experience of surfing places one in a frame of mind that has the potential to (1) cause one

to forget about the everyday, (2) ignore productivity and efficiency, (3) enhance ones

relationship to nature, (4) mutate ones sense of time, and (5) create a sense of


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potentiality or feeling right. As a result, this study answers the first research question in

the affirmative. For some, surfing can provoke a frame of mind that resists colonization

of the mind, even if only temporarily. Surfing is not a panacea, but the research indicates

that it yields a number of opportunities for resisting the violence of the rat race. However,

there are two specific theoretical concerns that relate to this potential.

First, one possible rebuttal to this finding is th

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