Tahiti intertwined: Ancestral land, tourist postcard, and nuclear test site

In this article, I apply ideas from Foucault, Lefebvre, and Soja about thir dspace, or space beyond dualisms, to an understanding of "Tahiti" as a comp lex, intertwined place. For most Tahitians, a sense of place is rooted in l and, which individuals describe as a nurturing mother. Genealogical ties to land define personal identities and social relationships. For the world at large, however, the perception of Tahiti is based on seductive, mass-media ted, touristic images. The perpetuation of these images, whose origins go b ack two-hundred years, has become increasingly enmeshed in the economic and political agendas of the French colonial government. The resumption-of nuc lear testing in French Polynesia in 1995-96 and the subsequent rioting by T ahitians, which disseminated negative images throughout the world, provide a setting for an analysis of Tahiti that moves beyond dualisms. Tahiti is u nderstood instead as an intertwined thirdspace, equally real and imagined, immediate and mediated.