Beach crossings : voyaging across times, cultures, and self / Greg Dening.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dening, Greg.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ethnology--French Polynesia--Marquesas Islands.

Ethnology.

Ethnohistory.

French Polynesia--Marquesas Islands.

Ethnohistory--French Polynesia--Marquesas Islands.

Robarts, Edward.

Crook, William Pascoe, 1775-1846.

Crook, William Pascoe.

Marquesas Islands (French Polynesia)--History.

Marquesas Islands (French Polynesia).

Marquesas Islands (French Polynesia)--Discovery and exploration.

Marquesas Islands (French Polynesia)--Social life and customs.

Physical Description:

ix, 376 pages : illustrations, maps ; 26 cm

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.

Summary:

Distinguished historian/anthropologist Greg Dening here revisits the island beaches of Oceania in an extended essay on first encounters and the peoples they brought together. An imaginative exploration of the symbolic strip where ocean meets island, Dening's meditation reflects upon the bloody history of the Marquesas in the South Pacific: its inhabitants and its combatants, the author's own time spent there and in study of his subject. This is a book to treasure and to reflect upon.

First encounters are usually written about as the history of explorers and the anthropology of "others." It is Greg Dening's project to produce a history/anthropology of both, "on the beach," where so many of these exchanges between peoples began. Dening imaginatively reconstructs the first interactions between explorers, missionaries, and natives-mostly in the Marquesas, the primary focus of his scholarly work. He examines fictional accounts of these encounters as well as the written record, revisiting the experiences of Captain Bligh and Gauguin, Melville's seafarers as well as some famous castaways. Each featured beach crossing is prefaced with an introduction placing the encounter in its historical context.

Beach Crossings is for Greg Dening a summary work, the apex of a fifty-year career that has taken him across many beaches and oceans. The author of the seminal volume Mr. Bligh's Bad Language, Dening writes here an intensely personal, compelling reflection upon his crossings, his subjects'-and ours.

Contents:

Prologue: A Most Remarkable Voyage 1

Beginning 11

1 Writing the Beach 23

Crossings: Voyaging into Deep Time 44

2 Being There 55

Crossings: An Archaeology of Believing 99

3 By Sea to the Beach 113

Crossings: An Archaeology of Learning 136

4 Finding the Land 149

Crossings: Way-finding 167

5 Encompassing the Land 185

Crossings: 'Ethnogging' 224

6 The Strangers Come 235

Crossings: 'Remember me?' 258

7 On the Beach 269

Crossings: Performing 316

After Beach 331

Exiting 345.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN:

0812238494

OCLC:

55665305