Читать книгу Empire in Waves. A Political History of Surfing онлайн

11 страница из 91

The case of Rafael Lima is certainly unusual. Most surfers were not involved in training the paramilitaries or death squads of Latin America. Most, in fact, paid them little heed. The Lima account does, however, starkly reveal the ways that surfers, as people and as tourists, inevitably maneuvered through an inherently political world. Surfing is of course ultimately about plea sure. People ride waves because it is fun. Gliding across the face of a moving mass of water, turning offthe top of a folding lip, tucking into a barrel: these feel good, so much so that surfers oft en speak of the wave-riding experience as something akin to a spiritual quest. Yet plea sure, like “the personal” once highlighted by the women’s movement, is political. We must thus come to appreciate surfing in political terms. Although surfing may involve a specific person riding a specific wave at a specific beach, those waves travel vast distances, just like the surfers who set out across the planet to ride them. Surfing, in other words, is a natural global phenomenon, and it enjoys a rich and complex global history. It is the goal of Empire in Waves to tease from this history some of the politics inherent to the enduring quest for aquatic pleasure.