Lexington Books Surfing, Street Skateboarding, Performance, and Space: On Board Motility

Surfing, Street Skateboarding, Performance, and Space: On Board Motility draws from critical cultural studies, political philosophy, postcolonial studies, urban sociology, and poststructuralist theory in the context of human communication and performance to construct an epistemology of riding boards. This book ponders why we move the way we do and examines the ways in which movements communicate, developing, as a result, a theoretical perspective or board motility that is gestural and fluid, moving in relation to shifting social and physical landscapes. By combining the discourses and practices of critical theory and physical movement, this text presents a sustained analysis of radical political philosophy. In the book the symbolic narratives associated with each physical practice are deconstructed as their theoretical counterparts are thoroughly established. Then, through performance, the author narrows the divide between these two forms of thinking, verbal and nonverbal, outlining and embodying an ontological and epistemological stoke in the process that emerges from riding boards, on both waves and streets. Review In this theoretically dense treatise, Fine (communication studies, Humboldt State Univ.) offers readers who are already quite well versed in poststructuralist thought an "epistemology of the board" (i.e., ways of learning--and then knowing--about the social world via performance, embedded in the course of riding both skateboards and surfboards). Through detailed, deeply reflective, first-person accounts of his skateboarding and surfing exploits, Fine ponders the socially constructed meanings of movement and performance in oftentimes fleeting and ever-changing spatial environs. His deep deconstruction of unconventional movement in time and space provides the sophisticated reader with ways of thinking about how our daily movement has historical, political, and cultural meanings encoded within, and how potentially transformative the performance of movement itself can be. . . a truly novel lens with which to view our social world. Summing Up: Recommended. Researchers and faculty.--CHOICE Eloquently written and theoretically rich, this book makes a splash in the scholarship of everyday performance, space, movement. It's a refreshing and thought-provoking read that combines refined academic due diligence with the excitement of outlaw skater culture. I anticipate it being enjoyed by both students and professors alike.--Jason Del Gandio, Temple University Hunter Hawkins Fine provides has written a sophisticated assessment of movement in space as public performance. Surfing, Street Skateboarding, Performance, and Space: On Board Motility is a unique book that foregrounds everyday mobility and larger historical changes that can be re-considered through urban performance studies.--Daniel Makagon, DePaul University About the Author Hunter H. Fine is lecturer of communication studies at Humboldt State University.