The Hawaiian Shirt is the Uniform of the Off-Duty Astronaut
Hiʻilei Julia HobartThis presentation focuses on the conceptual overlap between Hawaiʻi, outer space, and midcentury kitsch as a phenomenon born out of cold war militarization of the Pacific. In particular, I examine how and why the Hawaiian shirt operates as the off-duty uniform of the astronaut, suggesting its symbolic meaning offers insight into the way that ideas of the tropics become coded, both implicitly and explicitly, through forms of pleasure that help to do the work of settler colonial dispossessive violence, both at home and in space. The Hawaiian shirt not only signifies white, masculinist, and military claims to "final frontiers" that are as old as South Seas exploration, but also the complementarity of the tropical and astral spatial imaginary as it has developed over time.
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