Remapping home: touring the betweenness of Kwajalein

Abstract

"Remapping Home: Touring the Betweenness of Kwajalein" is a project that interrogates ambivalent notions of home and place within the multidimensional contexts of military colonialism, small-town suburbia, childhood memory, and indigenous epistemology on the island of Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands. Articulating Marshallese oral traditions and coral reef structures with the "rhizome" described by Deleuze and Guattari in A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, the author explores multiple, contradictory "maps" of the island in an effort to remap his own sense of home. Emphasizing the synchronicity between tourism and tours of duty, the thesis is constructed as a multimedia "tour" of Kwajalein recorded in printed form and visually on an accompanying DVD that traverses between critical discourse analysis, reflective poetic narrative, visual imagery, and three short film pieces. These different sections are threaded together as "stops," "detours," and "intermezzos" along the tour itinerary, which is mapped around the contours of the island.