Quintessentially Creole - a few thoughts about Creolization
Reflections on what makes us human, with the help of Édouard Glissant
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There are many different ways for us to understand the World.
Studying History can help you understand what happened. Anthropology is another approach to the question. If you are more interested in interactions between humans, answers can be found in Sociology, or in Economics, and so on and so forth.
Today, I’d like to write a bit about a philosophical concept, offered to the World by an Antillean Poet, which sheds new light on how Human beings develop through the World. A different approach.
I’d like to share it with you, because I find it to be very enlightening, in much more than the strictly explicative sense of this word.
This concept, proposed by Édouard Glissant, is the concept of Creolization.
Creolization is the process describing what happens when multiple distinct cultures - or elements of these cultures - are put in contact, in a place of the World, with the result being something new, something absolutely unpredictable, which is neither the sum nor the synthesis of those elements.
While it can seem a little cryptic written like that, this article is going to intent to clarify what it means, and why I would like to argue that this concept is fundamental to understanding to human condition.
So, let’s start explaining.
A good way to understand this approach is through the various - ‘inexhaustible list’ - high-profile examples of Creolization in history.
Aliocha Wald Lasowski’s (great) biography of Glissant lists a few which we will resume here first, but as we’ll see, there is truly a plethora of these situations - and for a good reason, we’ll get back to that.
François Rabelais was a French writer from the first half of the 1500’s, a period that would later be called French Renaissance. He invented hundreds of words in the French language of the time - we owe him, amongst many others, the fantastic words « farfelu », « frugal », « gargantuesque », « automate », « quintessence ». He was our Shakespeare, basically.
What is relevant to the discussion we are having now, is that Rabelais didn’t simply invent those words, but forged them, drawing from various languages he would know, going from Italian to Arabic or Hebrew.
« Quintessence », for example, is an encounter between Greek & Latin, used here by Rabelais in a different context, for a new purpose.
When Rabelais got taught the Latin & Greek languages, when he familiarized himself with these aspects of these cultures, nothing would have announced that his use of this knowledge, this culture, to create words that not only would transform the French language, but also permeate through other languages - notably English - and influence the course of ideas through new ways of saying stuff.
This is Creolization - putting in contact distinct elements of multiple cultures producing something new, unexpected, unpredictable, which is more than the sum or synthesis of those elements.
The second example that Lasowki gives in the introduction to Glissant’s biography (go read it if you can, it’s great) is even more telling, in my very humble opinion.
Henri Matisse was a major Painter of the first half of the 1900’s. Another French person, I know, I swear there are non-French examples later. He is widely considered one of the main representatives of an Art movement called Fauvism. Fauvism is, to say it too briefly, an Art movement characterized by its audacity in the use of chromatic colors, prioritizing them over the drawing itself, which will tend to be simplified and its contours partitioned.
Matisse, born in the core region of the tapestry industry of Northern France, will go and live in the former french protectorate of Morocco in the beginning of the 20th century. These travels, according to Lasowski, will deeply affect him and his Art. From the Oriental dresses depicted in his later paintings, to his revived interest in the use of vibrant colors, the hybridization of cultures, lights, colors, impressions inside the artist’s head will profoundly influence Matisse’s painting after these travels.
Once again, putting in contact different elements of distinct cultures - here in the form of architecture, textiles, even something so intangible as the relation one has with the lighting in an area of the World - will create something new & unpredictable.
Creolization is not the simple adoption of someone else’s cultural practices, nor an addition of both.
It is not entirely clear how, but it is known that Glass Pearls were introduced to Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) by Europeans at some point during the 18th century.
We also know that Greenlanders adopted these pearls, and they did not simply copy the style of European jewelry, but instead, they created a whole new and unique style of interlacing these European Pearls to resemble Inuit tattoos with their own symbolic meanings, inherited from times predating the encounters with Europeans.
By doing so emerged a new, absolutely stunning, and absolutely unpredictable type of Art which is now qualified of traditional style of jewelry and has been incorporated into the Greenlandic national costumes.
This is Creolization.
Not only the outcome is unexpected, but the steps towards Creolization also often happen in a sort of « Butterfly Effect » way.
In 1854, the US Peary expedition forcefully ended the nearly 200 years of Japan’s « Sakoku » strongly isolationist policy. It was principally to create markets for American goods to concurrence European’s growing influence in Asia, as well as obtaining from Japan new ports to refuel their ships in their voyages through the Pacific. Ending this isolation period created a vast economic and strategic interest for Japan in many European powers.
One of the by-products of all this was the renewed interest of European bourgeois collectors of Oriental goods & Craftsmanship. And this had a funny influence on European Art, not only because European artists would get in contact with new inspirations through Japanese Art, but they would also get new inspiration from the wrapping paper in which those porcelain vases would come to Europe. As it turns out, wrapping paper of these items was often made with old Prints, which would become in Europe a point of interest in itself !
Claude Monet (another French dude) notably inspired himself of these prints, and alongside his fascination for Oriental art, it can easily be perceived in his Paintings.
Shortly said, without the forced opening of Japan in the middle of the 19th century, the whole impressionist movement - not even thinking of all it inspired - would have been different, if it would have been.
Something else would have been, for sure, but not this, and not in this form.
There are countless examples of Creolization in the Arts, and it would be impossible to name them all. One can only recognize when it’s happening.
Georges Harrisson taking sitar classes with Ravi Shankar and incorporating it into Beatles album - introducing it to millions of Western listeners. Hayao Miyazaki traveling to Welsh coalminers towns and taking inspiration from Gulliver’s Travel to write « 天空の城ラピュタ » (Laputa : Castle in the Sky), inspiring tens of millions of viewers.
Those two are example of Creolization that come on the top of my head instantly, that show that this process can come in a voluntary, active way.
But it is obvious for Glissant that Creolization does NOT always come from a voluntary place, with the intent of getting inspired by other cultures.
The circumstances leading to the process of Creolization can be non-voluntary to say the least. The whole history of the Caribbean & Antilles, where Glissant writes from, started with one of the most horrific & traumatic chapters of human history. The fact that these cultures got put in contact with each other nonetheless created this creolized culture from which many other chapters of history are written. Whatever these chapters are.
One of the best example of Creolization in the Arts comes from an adjacent and dark chapter of human history. It is the emergence of Blues music in the American Deep-South and its ramifications.
Blues music is deeply rooted in African rhythms inherited from Oral traditions, passed down through generations of enslaved Africans - despite the deaths of millions and the difficulties of communication between enslaved people of completely different ethnic groups.
It is also linked to the context of these now African-American suffering of the harsh labor condition & inhumane exploitation inherent to slavery - hence the name « Blues », word born in those times to describe this state of the soul that sadness & melancholy could not describe accurately.
First these songs will be sung A-Capella in the fields, sometimes accompanied of makeshift instruments, and then later will be formalized the sonorities of Occidental instruments made available to the African-American musicians in the early 1900’s.
One strong characteristic of this approach is that the Identity created by a process of Creolization is not to be seen as a Singular Root - unique, rigid and hierarchical.
To this concept, Glissant opposes the concept of Rhizome-Identity - always changing, multi central & horizontal, that reinforces itself and grows when meeting with other « roots ».
We see it with Blues music : it cannot be defined as coming from One and only One major origin. It takes it’s form in the Relation between different centers, to create something new, something else.
This Creolized music will, we know it, contribute to write other chapters in history. Through other processes of Creolization/Hybridization, it will divide itself into a billion genres, amongst them none other than Jazz music & Rock N’ Roll, which themselves will evolve into a billion genres like Bossa Nova, Rap Music, Punk or Melodic Metal.
From its origin to its many ramifications, this culture touched people, marginalized or not, generated discourse in terms of musicology as well as in political terms, and here comes the snowball.
Another butterfly effect to be sure, and a big one with that.
There would be enough articles required to treat this particular rabbit hole to fill up a lifetime, and I don’t intend to start it here.
But I would like to Highlight one story that clearly depicts another unpredictable effect of Creolization.
In 1972, Greenlandic band Sume released an album called Sumut « Where to ? ».
This relatively traditional Psychedelic Rock music was, for the first time, accompanied by lyrics in Kalaallisut, that is to say, in Greenlandic. The album was purchased by 20% of the Greenlandic population.
The lyrics, apart from being sung in Greenlandic, which is not a detail in a context of colonization, are explicitly critical of the Danish colonial power, and calling for more autonomy - if not for independence. It put words, that didn’t exist yet in their language, on the oppressions they were living. It gave pride to the Greenlandic people in their language, in their culture. And it was popular.
This album was so powerful that it launched the movement towards Greenlandic autonomy.
Greenlanders in the 70’s, with their own background and in their context, getting in contact with the heritage of Blues music, Creolized culture created by African-American people with their own background and in their own context nearly a century ago, and creating a cultural movement that would lead the path to more autonomy and relative liberation of their people.
It is not the only time parallels can be drawn between the contexts in which will emerge creolized cultures.
To come back to lighter subjects, yet link back to Rock music, we can speak about Art Nouveau.
Art Nouveau - you can call it Jugendstil if you want, or Glasgow style, Stile Floreale, whatever - is an Art style that emerged in the late 1800’s in Europe. It appeared as a byproduct of the industrial revolution, which started around a century earlier in the UK. Many artists wanted to break away from the ugly aesthetics of the industry - machinery, pollution, metallic and square shaped industry, not to speak of the social context.
In reaction, they started using a lot of organic, abstract patterns, floral & natural imagery, plants & many feminine figures in their art - I mean look at Mucha’s oeuvre!
And this is Creolization in itself, because who could have guessed that the industrial revolution would end up giving Mucha, Gaudi or even the city of Ålesund to the World ? The outcome is unpredictable.
But now comes the parallel.
About a century after the industrial revolution, we are in the 1960’s, and other things are ugly.
There is War in Vietnam, fights for the Civil Rights Movements, and general reject of materialistic, capitalistic culture in the US. Slowly, the Hippie and countercultural movements will take place in social spaces, especially around the San Francisco bay area.
One form of organization to federate people was concerts. And one way to get people to go to a concert in the 60’s was through posters in the streets.
In this context of reject of the society they live in & its aesthetics, poster designers from this time like Wes Wilson or Bonnie MacLean would draw from the aesthetics of the Art Nouveau heritage - Feminine figures, flowers, abstract organic patterns ; many elements in these poster Art is to be found directly inspired from Art Nouveau.
It differs in one major way : the use of way more vibrant, flashy colors to reference and mimic the visual impressions of hallucinogenic substances, a staple of hippie culture.
There you have it, Creolization.
There are two last examples, maybe more personal, which I would like to give, before getting to my main point, or better phrased, my main interrogation I would like to pose here.
The second to last is the practice of Skateboarding. I’m giving it here to illustrate Glissant’s claim that « a culture that creolizes itself doesn’t uniforms itself ».
This story begins in pre-colonial Hawai'i, where the Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) would master the art of what they called heʻe nalu - wave sliding - since at least the XIV century.
Europeans came around in the end of the 18th century, and did the same as they did in (too many) other places : colonize the place, with its lot of massacres, language and cultural destruction. For about a century, the occupiers would suppress the practice of heʻe nalu, up until American tourism would pick up in Waikiki, at the end of the 19th century.
There are very interesting stories about Native Hawaiians, re-popularizing the Art back in Hawai'i and contributing to making it a practice and a sport amongst the American colonizers, both in Hawai'i and in California - a story of creolization in itself.
But we are talking about Skateboarding, and skateboarding came to be, as many know, because of Californian Surfers getting bored and learning to ride the concrete sidewalks with modified crate-scooters as they would do on the ocean with modified ʻolo, kikoʻo, or alaia - that is to say, surfboards from the 1950’s.
Skateboarding would develop itself as a cultural practice as well as a sport in the next decades to come, on American soil as well as abroad, to reach a peak in the 2000’s (and later) through capillarity of Avril Lavigne’s songs which became hegemonic in the global West around this time (don’t @ me I’m not even joking about this but we’ll talk about it another time).
Now, Skateboarding is such a great example of what creolization actually is, and I’m going to try to explain you why.
There are MANY different ways to skate. Depending on one’s place of origin and where one practices, as well as one’s inspirations, you end up skating one way or another. Funny how it works.
In Europe, there is a relatively big DIY scene for example. Why ? Well, because they didn’t have any good infrastructure for a very long time comparatively to the US, yet they were submitted to the image coming from US videos and desires created by these images, and because Europeans had both the resources to build things themselves, and the institutional safety to construct DIY in semi-public shady areas without risking to pay their entire lifetime for any broken bone… So they did so.
Given the environment one evolves in, the style of skating differs hugely. Some cities have their reputation : Copenhagen is full of Bowls and crazy DIYs and ramps everywhere, Paris is a Street city.
Generally speaking, you see different type of urban architecture getting utilized in different ways depending on very basic stuff one doesn’t necessarily thinks about when thinking about skateboarding : terrain relief, urban choices concerning the ground covering, general level of infrastructure, societal tolerance.
Interestingly, Ugandan skaters building the first skatepark themselves are skating in a totally different way than everything else in the World. Parisian skaters have their own style, obviously more street oriented, and Copenhageners are crazy creative when it comes to Bowl skating.
And the way they skate, in return, will influence the rest of their social life, through the values conveyed by their way of practicing their sport, their game, their art.
All of that to say that when a culture gets Creolized, it does not mean that it Uniforms itself, on the contrary. Both part involved in the `Creolization process change, and therefore, continues.
The last example I want to give now is, funnily, remarkably similar to the first one I gave.
Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof was born a Jew in Białystok in the second half of the 1800’s. Białystok at this time was a Polish city occupied by Russia. At home, he spoke Yiddish, Russian and Polish. The elite of the city, as well as Russian for obvious reasons, also spoke German. Zamenhof would grow up in this context and conclude that it was the incomprehension between people that was the cause of oppressions.
He will, in 1887, publish a manifest for & rules of the first International Language under the pseudonym « Doktoro Esperanto ».
The language he codified is based on logic principles, quasi mathematical, mixing roots and words from many different existing languages, with no grammatical exception and very few linguistic cases, to facilitate its learning. The goal was to make it an international language so that everyone would be on the same level, without linguistic ascendant on any part.
The Esperanto language is a beautiful construction - still today, despite the cultural hegemony of English as an international language (in which you and I are participating right now), Esperanto has about 2 000 000 active speakers Worldwide, that attend conferences, hold events, make music, participate in culture.
Esperanto feels like the ultimate Creolized culture.
I have been multiplying the examples, probably more than necessary for any reader to get the point, not only because I enjoy writing about them (even if I do), but mostly to emphasize my next point : Isn’t everything Creole ?
This point obviously has to be discussed, so let’s do it.
I was talking about Esperanto, but in last analysis, are not all languages Creole ?
What I’m asking here can make you raise an eyebrow, but think about it. How did humans come to understand these lines ? How did languages form ?
They come from different origins, isolate for a while for one reason or another - political, geographical, climatic - where they sediment and differentiate, and then, they enter in contact with each other and evolve.
That’s why Modern English ends up being about 30% of Anglo-Norman & French origins. « Anatomic », « Jelly », « Judge », « Silhouette », « Vinegar » are 5 random loanwords I chose to prove my point. « Point ».
It is why Spanish counts 10% of its vocabulary directly imported from Arabic, and it is why the words for « Green » & « Red » in English and « Grøn » & « Rød » in Danish look suspiciously similar.
The word for « Skirt » in French was an adaptation of the Arabic word جوبا - « Jubba » -, which gave « Jupe ». In return, the word for a « Shirt » in Arabic is قميص - « Qamis » -, loan word from the Latin based languages that would give both « Chemise » in French, and « Camisa » in Castellano.
The list goes on and on, I can continue, I love this.
« Izquierda » ("Left" in Castellano) comes from Basque, as well as « Bagarre » ("Fight" in French). Both words « Taboo » & « Tattoo » come from Polynesian languages, respectively Tongan & Tahitian. The word « Alcohol » comes from Arabic !
This is only a shortlist of what pops through my head, only taken from languages that I personally happen to speak a bit, it does not do justice to the general phenomenon of language Creolization that is happening amongst the 7000 or so languages spoken on Earth.
Always changing by the Relation between its speakers and the contact with elements from outside, languages are also multi central - there are not build atop a unique roots but created and always co-modified by many influences. In this sense, I would argue that all languages are ontologically Creole.
If you are still dubitative on the veracity of my claims, re-read random paragraphs in the article trying to locate the origin of each word. You’ll see, and I haven’t even talked about food yet. « Veracity ».
Because if we want to speak about word of a foreign origin, food is definitely the place to look.
Tomato, Chocolate, Chili, Avocado - these words come from the Nahuatl language.
Apricots, Sugar - those ones come from Arabic.
Soy comes from Japanese ; Coffee from Turkish. These are very easy to find because most food IS Creole.
Because the planet does not grow things equally in different parts of the World, crops, grains, even animals are unevenly distributed on Earth. This means that most food is - for most cultures - of foreign origin.
If the word « Tomato » comes from Nahuatl, a Native American macro-language of the Uto-Aztecan family, it is not by coincidence.
Said like that it sounds obvious, nearly stupid or circular, but if this Word comes from Nahuatl, it is because the Tomato itself comes from the area where the people spoke Nahuatl.
As in, the Tomato is a New World fruit.
Native to the Andes, then domesticated & cultivated by the Aztecs & Mayas in the South of what is today called Mexico.
Yet when I ask you to think about Tomatoes in Gastronomy, I’m sure you are thinking of Bolognese, maybe Gazpacho, Ketchup, or even Bloody Mary. This is, again, how Creolization works - when putting in contact elements of distinct cultures, in this example the cultivation of Tomatoes by the Aztecs & Mayas with 16th century European products & culinary traditions, will emerge something else, something new, unpredictable from the sum or synthesis of these original cultures. In the form of a bottle of Ketchup.
This is also a good example of how the creolization of cultures does NOT mean it uniforms itself. It is multi central, and will produce different outcomes in different contexts - as different as Bolognese and Bloody Mary.
And just as with languages, putting in review the entirety of mankind’s recipes & ingredients, one will figure out that indeed, gastronomy & food cultures ARE Creolized cultures.
If you need some examples to try to convince you, I will oblige, of course. Again, I love this.
What was true for Tomatoes is even truer for Potatoes, which would become a staple product of not only European but also Asian & African gastronomic cultures because of it’s incredible energetic output. It basically saved Europeans from starvation. And just like the Tomato - it didn’t uniform the cultures that adopted it : Tortilla de Patatas, Gnocchis, French Fries, Aligot, Potato Dumplings, Rösti… To name a few.
The Sweet Potato variety will also take on the World, with its effect being particularly obvious in Papua New Guinea, where, after it’s introduction by the Portuguese through commerce with Indonesians, will surpass all other indigenous crops to support the Agricultural lifestyle of the Highlanders - as opposed to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle previously imposed by the lack of efficient domesticable crops in the region.
We could multiply examples infinitely, from Yerba Mate to Nutmegs, from Cheese to Chocolate.
Because agriculture & gastronomy are, like languages, fundamentally Creole by nature. Even the early diffusion of Agriculture in the Neolithic obeyed this process : one group of people adopted agriculture and gradually stopped relying on hunting-gathering because of culture exchange with another people that already adopted agriculture. Yet what they will grow depended on what was available to them - and how they would implement it into their gastronomy differed as well.
And what is true for crops is also true for transformed goods.
Before the 1830’s, the journey from England to its Indian colonies varied from 3 to 6 months, all around the Southern tip of Africa, and through the Indian Ocean before reaching the coast. This meant that the beer destined to the British population of the East Indies had a tendency to turn bad before reaching their destination.
With time, they discovered that one type of beer was less sour than others when reaching port - it happened to be a variety of Pale Ale brewed back in England with comparatively more Hops than Malt, the October Beer, which gave it more natural conservative for the trip, as well as making it slightly stronger in Alcohol. This discovery incentivized brewers to experiment with this new style, which evolved the genre to what would later be called Pale Ale prepared for India - India Pale Ale, IPAs.
To the risk of repeating myself, isn’t this the unpredictable outcome of one element of a culture (the heat in India & its distance from England) put in contact with elements of another one (the fact that the Brits like to drink beer) ?
Aren’t we, once again, in presence of a process of Creolization, which would give birth to another branch of history ? Because, as always, the story continues. IPAs will, as did Blues in a different context, expand and sophisticate itself through many, many different genres. New England IPA, East Coast IPA, Triple IPA Double Dry Hop, Tropical Hazy Pale Ale, you name it.
We could, once again, multiply the examples and historical anecdotes, but I think it is clear for now.
I think by now it is time we ask ourselves again : Isn’t Creolization… Everywhere ?
We have seen that so many aspects of human culture and existence are fundamentally Creole - languages, alimentation, Arts…
Isn’t it, at this point, consubstantial to the human experience ?
I would argue that it is.
After all, isn’t it how, on an individual basis, we experience the World ?
In any interaction with the outside World, One comes with his own baggage - cultural, intellectual, emotional, made up by his accumulated experiences - and confronts it with someone else’s. In the family, with peers, at school, with friends, with partners, with authors through their books, with strangers on the Internet.
These interactions, these exchanges, this Relation, is in the end the process of putting in contact One’s culture, or an element of it, with a distinct element of someone else’s, with the outcome of this interaction unexpected, unpredictable.
Granted, these interactions are happening in a certain environment where the degree of divergence between these multiple baggages may vary. You don’t have the same confrontation of culture when speaking with members of your Family, who will tend to be socially closer to yourself, and speaking to the Family members of your Friend you are visiting in Nepal.
But the process of HOW one evolves is the same : by interaction, by Relation.
We relate with the other party’s baggage, whatever it will be - new information, new point of view, a testimony, a new Word, an attitude - and we incorporate it within ourselves, one way or another, according to our own baggage inherited from our other experiences.
By nature, the Relation IS modifying us.
Now, this is happening to individuals all along their lives. How far from their point of origin & how often they will interact with others is not said. Nor what these interactions will result in - these are not predictable.
But the basis for Creolization is rooted in our very way of Being.
There are other concepts at stake, of course.
Edouard Glissant never said that everything was Creole. If you get this impression, it is probably me being hyperbolic.
To the contrary, he states that some societies, for example the USA, despite having all the potentialities for Creolization - is far from a Creolized culture in his eyes.
The concept of Creolization is dependent on the concept of Relation. Accepting Relation with someone else is accepting the exchange - it requires aperture, and it requires Respect.
These prerequisite are not found in a large part of human history, and that's a euphemism.
You do not get anything new by refusing the exchange, in the form of cultural suppression, in the form of extermination, in the form of oppression.
Robbing kids away from their parents with the intend of assimilating to a supposed hierarchically superior culture is NOT Relation. Shaming and beating up kids speaking their Native language so that they learn yours is NOT Relation.
There has been and there are ideological movements that are antinomic with Creolization.
Yet even within the effects of these unfortunate, unfavorable structures, by the effect of Randomness, often by accident, Creolization can still happen - that’s the story of Surfing we’ve seen, when the opening to tourism revived the practice of heʻe nalu ; that’s the story of Blues, while the White masters didn’t open themselves to Creolization, the Black slaves did.
Glissant « offers » humanity a concept to reunite the concept of identity to the rest of the World, to the act of sharing it to others, and by Relation, to receive from them. Obviously, this is on us to accept this offering, to make it ours.
To finish on a different note, I’d like to ask, what about Vernacularism ?
Isn’t there, out there, cultural traits that are specific, unique, endemic to a place, to a certain group of people ?
I mean, it was Hawaiians that invented surfing. There must be a reason, right ?
To this objection, I would like to answer in two parts.
Firstly, many of what we take for vernacular cultures are actually Creolized cultures. They persisted so well into our time we simply forgot their origins. Examples of this are everywhere in Architecture : the Zakopane style, unique to the Southern mountainous tip of Poland, appears to be vernacular - you don’t find it anywhere else ! But it’s creation was a Creolized process, encounter between the Carpathian traditional Wooden houses & the Art Nouveau style of the early 1900’s.
Dragestil in Norway has a surprisingly similar story - in an attempt to create national consciousness, leading to and following the independence of the country, Norwegian architects re-vitalize old Viking style by hybridizing it with modern Architectural styles, including Art Nouveau.
We forget the origins of culture, because they are living things. In the same way that one eats Bolognese and thinks of Italy and not of the Aztec, and in the same way one watches Castle in the Sky and characterizes it as Japanese, ignoring the Welsh influence that inspired it in the first place. And we haven’t read Gulliver’s travels, how would we know it was inspired by it ?
Secondly, one of the beauty in the approach, is that the focus is less on the point of origin, but more on what is created by the relation between multiple cultures. It does not negate that these cultures have a point of origin - itself for a large part the product of a Creolized past - but insists on the outcome produced by the Relation.
We do not know why and how Hawaiians invented Surf.
But we do know that they came by boats to these islands, though. Isn’t Surfing an adaptation to a different technique, for a different purpose, of moving yourself on the ocean ? In other terms, isn’t this practice as well Creolized, in a sense, even if we don’t know what it originated from ?
And more importantly, the focus is on the outcome - the identity of ancient, pre-surfer Hawaiians continues to live on with this new practice. Culture persists through changes.
All cultures persist through changes, without losing themselves in the process.
It is in this way that I affirm that human beings are, by their very nature, quintessentially Creole.
Etienne, September 12025