Strandens topologier

Abstract

Beaches are the order of the day, ecologically, politically, and economically. Globally, the world’s population emigrates to the shorelines. The predicament referred to as the Anthropocene has made apparent the complexity of beaches as nature-culture-hybrids – ecotones – where biotopes and cultural practices meet, intersect and blend. Whether the issue at stake is production, pastime or pollution, the topicality of the beach remains unquestionable.

Drawing on E.R. Curtius’ historical study of topology and anthropologist Tim Ingold’s notion of taskscape the article identifies, analyses and discusses clusters of topoi lifted from the cultural history – literature, visual arts – of the beach. From the beaches of Troy by way of the Scheveningen beach of Dutch painters and the sun worshippers of mass tourism to the plastic beach of the 21st century, the ambition is to sketch out the many complexities that inform the Western conception of the beach, how they have had and still have an immediate bearing on the way we organize our life worlds and how the beach becomes a nexus for a permanently ongoing negotiation of the nature culture divide.