Winner of the 2013 ICAS Book Prize (Social Sciences)
The "Tahiti" that most people imagine - white-sand beaches, turquoise
lagoons, and beautiful women - is a product of 18th century European
romanticism and persists today as the bedrock of Tahiti's tourism
industry. This postcard image, however, masks a different reality. The
dreams and desires that the tourism industry promotes distract from the
medical nightmares and environmental destruction caused by France's
30-year nuclear testing program in French Polynesia. Tahitians see the
burying of a bomb in their land as deeply offensive. For Tahitians, the
land abounds with ancestral fertility, and genealogical identity, and is
a source of physical and spiritual nourishment. These imagined and lived
perspectives seem incompatible, yet are intricately intertwined in the
political economy.
Tahiti Beyond the Postcard engages with questions about the subtle but
ubiquitous ways in which power entangles itself in place-related ways.
Miriam Kahn uses interpretive frameworks of both Tahitian and European
scholars, drawing upon ethnographic details that include ancient chants,
picture postcards, antinuclear protests, popular song lyrics, and the
legacy of Paul Gauguin's art, to provide fresh perspectives on
colonialism, tourism, imagery, and the anthropology of place.