Becoming 'Pearl Harbor': A 'Lost Geography' of American Empire

Abstract

In the last century, geography assumed a position of central importance within the United States' imperial project. Yet the rise of capitalist globalism was accompanied by a corresponding loss of popular geographic awareness within the United States, a paradox that Neil Smith (2004) has called a "lost geography" of American Empire. Through a case study of the transformation of Ke Awalau o Puʻuloa on the island of Oʻahu into what most people know today as "Pearl Harbor" this thesis extends the concept of a "lost geography" by examining the dialectical relationship between the production of a particular place and the multi-scalar articulations of U.S. imperial formation. In short, this study considers how place and empire are mutually constituted in ways that conceal their constitutive social relations. Further, I discuss the "paradoxical" subjectivities that emerge in this process.