Sea of Islands

Stub note: This page requires fuller treatment. It currently holds the concept as it enters the wiki through Treadwell's chapter and Hau'ofa's quoted text.

Definition

The sea of islands is Epeli Hau'ofa's re-description of Oceania against the Western image of scattered, isolated, insignificant small islands in a vast empty sea. Hau'ofa understands the inhabitants as "part of an expansive liquid terrain, a surface that is traversed with skillful navigation" — the sea not as separator but as the connective, generative medium of a world. His essay "Our Sea of Islands" closes: "Oceania is vast, Oceania is expanding, Oceania is hospitable and generous, Oceania is humanity rising from the depths of brine and regions of fire deeper still, Oceania is us. We are the sea, we are the ocean, we must wake up to this ancient truth and together use it to overturn all hegemonic views that aim ultimately to confine us again, physically and psychologically, in the tiny spaces that we have resisted accepting as our sole appointed places."

Two spatial theses attach to the concept in Treadwell's presentation. First, skillful navigation as spatial knowledge: the navigation skills "were recorded in the sand and in stick charts, precise spatial descriptions of bodies moving under a rotating sky in a wide-horizoned ocean. The stick charts describe geometries of the surface of the sea aligned to time, with marks that record moving islands, rising stars, and planets" — geometry aligned to time and celestial movement rather than to fixity. Second, the boundary thesis: prior to European arrival, "Boundaries were not imaginary lines in the ocean, but rather points of entry that were constantly negotiated and even contested. The sea was open to anyone who could navigate his way through." Treadwell's gloss: "The sea is porous, map-like, narrated, and figured."

Key Thinkers

• Epeli Hau'ofa — the concept's author ("Our Sea of Islands," 1993; "The Ocean in Us," 2008); Fijian-Tongan writer and anthropologist writing for Oceanic people; not yet paged (see log).
• Sarah Treadwell — the concept's conduit into interior theory: "Hau'ofa points to a vital enlargement of space – oceanic space as expansive, extending past the terrestrial ground of islands to make connections of all sorts."

Related Concepts

• Oceanic Interiority — the interior-theoretical development: the same expansive sea read as the largest interior, held by permeable membranes.
• Boundaries — the boundary thesis: negotiated points of entry rather than imaginary lines — the sea as the boundary rule-system's most fluid case.
• Territory — the expansive liquid terrain as territory defined by traversal and connection rather than by enclosure.
• The Dialectics of Outside and Inside — the sea as the outside that is "porous, map-like, narrated, and figured" — an outside with an interior structure.
• Postcolonial Identity — the concept's political target: the "hegemonic views" that confine island peoples "physically and psychologically, in the tiny spaces."
• Smooth and Striated Space — possible kinship (Deleuze & Guattari via the navigation theme): the open sea crossed by skill rather than partitioned by lines; to be confirmed when the concept receives fuller treatment.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Oceanic interiorities (Treadwell 2018) — the concept's entry point: Hau'ofa's closing invocation of "Our Sea of Islands"; the stick charts; the negotiated boundary/points-of-entry thesis; "The sea is porous, map-like, narrated, and figured."

Open Questions

• Hau'ofa's sea is open ("open to anyone who could navigate his way through") — does the sea of islands refute or confirm Ardener's rule-governed boundaries: are the "points of entry that were constantly negotiated" a boundary rule-system whose rules are negotiated per crossing?
• Do stick charts — "geometries of the surface of the sea aligned to time" — constitute an alternative history of architectural representation, in which the drawing records movement and time rather than fixed extent?
• How does the sea of islands relate to the smooth-and-striated-space distinction, and to practiced place: is navigation the paradigmatic practicing of place?