Introduction
November 16, 2008
New Poles, Old Imperialism?
This special issue comes at a particularly charged moment. The Arctic
and Antarctic have re-emerged as sites of renewed rivalry among the old
colonial powers, as well as creating contention among new international
participants. Nations are competing over the development of natural
resources and access to shipping routes that were once off-limits. In
conjunction with rapid climate change, these circumstances represent not
only a political challenge but also an intellectual one, particularly
for postcolonial and feminist critique. Colonial discourses dating from
the early 20th century in many respects seem to have been revived by
responses to both geophysical and geopolitical change. Unlike in the
field of post-colonial studies, significant feminist scholarship has not
been central to the emerging field of Polar Studies up to now. Lisa
Bloom's book, Gender on Ice first raised these issues in 1993,
and some of the projects of the artists and scholars gathered here are
building on this initial foray. This special issue promotes
understudied yet crucial aspects of feminist and environmentalist art
and scholarship of the polar regions, connecting gender to nationalism,
the politics of imperialism, and science.
While this issue of S&F Online is part of both renewed and
growing interest in the poles, we could not have anticipated at the
outset how quickly changing current events would shape our thinking on
this topic. The Northwest and Northeast passages have been opened by
melting ice due to the fast rate of radical climate change in the
Arctic. Shipping companies from around the world are already planning
to exploit the first simultaneous opening of the routes. Given this
momentous historical development, the rivalry for the Arctic's formerly
inaccessible resources has intensified, and recalls earlier 19th and
20th century struggles for power. At a moment when we thought the
excesses of colonialism belonged to the past, current events remind us
that the resurgence of interest in these regions is not only about
concern for dying polar bears, arresting global warming, and protecting
the Arctic landscape and indigenous peoples, but also involves
territorial expansion and competition over natural resources. The
international race to claim the vast wealth of oil and gas believed to
lie beneath the Arctic seabed is only just getting underway, as
competing governments position themselves to claim stakes in the seabed
of the Arctic Ocean, now that it is sometimes ice-free.[1] The U.S. might
start large-scale drilling thanks to its vast Alaskan territory, which
holds oil in the Arctic off its shores. Some of the same discursive
strategies we are seeing now, particularly the way the Arctic is being
re-imagined by drilling proponents of the oil and gas industry as a
conveniently "empty frozen wasteland of snow and ice" replay earlier
imperial narratives of Arctic and Antarctic exploration in which those
territories were imagined as "white" or "blank" spaces to be filled in
by the very Europeans who designated them so.[2]
In Antarctica, this "blank" space has been filled with both the
idealization of a unique space for "peace and science" and imperialist
maneuvering by a number of different countries. As the British
Antarctic Survey says in its description of the Antarctic Treaty, which
was signed in 1959: "There are few places on Earth where there has never
been war, where the environment is fully protected, and where scientific
research has priority. The whole of the Antarctic continent is like
this. A land which the Antarctic Treaty parties call a natural reserve
devoted to peace and science." Yet, despite this idealized vision,
competition over territorial claims remains under the surface created by
the treaty. Claims that have been established at different historical
moments might also be reanimated, while countries like the U.S. and
Russia, which have no actual territorial claims, are also deeply involved
in setting up bases there. Whereas the Arctic is mostly of concern to
the countries that share borders with it, Antarctica is of interest to
much of the rest of the world, although, of course, not all nations have
equal resources for exploration, exploitation, and outpost-building.
Chile and Argentina are 2 of the 7 countries that have claimed major
sectors of Antarctica, and at different points each has sent families
with children to live there.[3]
Their claims overlap with the British
claim, and each country restated their claims in 2007 when Britain
restated its sovereignty claims. Japan was an original treaty signatory,
has had bases there since the early 60s, and is currently in the
international spotlight for its Antarctic whaling practices. Brazil,
China, India, Korea, Peru and Uruguay have consultative status on the
Antarctic Treaty, and many other countries, such as Columbia, Cuba,
Guatemala, Papua New Guinea and Venezuela have agreed to abide by the
treaty. China just opened its third base, and India is claiming
territory on the geological argument that it used to be connected to
Antarctica.[4]
Though at first glance it might seem that these recent territorial
claims as well as contemporary discourses on global warming are gender
and race neutral, a feminist analysis of representations of the Arctic
and Antarctic suggests a re-emergence of interest in polar narratives
promoting imperial masculinities. This surge of interest since the late
1990s is exemplified by recent reprintings of original accounts, new
biographies of 19th and early 20th century explorers, and even 'reality
TV' simulated re-enactments of their journeys.[5]
In contrast to the colonial nostalgia for masculine heroism, what
some of the works collected here share is a questioning of the desire to
re-create and recover the world of the late Victorian colonial explorers
and their culture of extraordinary confidence, manly spirit, and grace
under pressure. These feminist scholars and artists are witnessing
colonialism, in both the Arctic and Antarctic, being recuperated and
rehabilitated at a distance, such that the inherent violence of its
dispositions is lost from view. In Antarctica, the material remnants of
empire remain preserved in the ice. The huts of explorers such as
Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton create "the past [that] is
uncannily visitable," to use Francis Spufford's phrase.[6] The remains of the
failed Franklin expedition serve a similar function in the Arctic.
There are few more enduring Arctic obsessions than discovering the fate
of the celebrated British explorer Franklin, who led three Arctic
expeditions in the 19th century. As the Arctic warms and the summer sea
ice melts, attracting global attention, attempts to find Franklin's
ships and its relics that were trapped by the sea ice in 1846 underscore
the renewed interest in the Northwest Passage.[7] It is as if the past
does not have to end—it can be relived, uncomplicatedly and detached
from historical time, at the "end of the earth."
This special issue collects critical feminist engagements with a
newly exposed past, as well as more recent scholarship and art works
that demonstrate a feminist opening of the territory of the polar
regions. These essays, interviews and artworks offer overlapping and
competing visions of the polar regions, even as they challenge and
engage older narratives and material histories that have shaped the
regions. Given the ambitious range of global, social, political,
economic, scientific, and cultural factors that have prompted our focus
on the Arctic and Antarctic, it has taken the feminist collaborative
efforts of three of us working together for over the period of a year
and a half to bring completion to this project. All of us had done
substantial work on this subject in the past. Kay spent 13 months at
the South Pole base in Antarctica in 1985; currently she is an
astronomer who chairs the Department of Women's Studies and co-teaches
'Exploring the Poles' at Barnard College. Since the publication of
Gender on Ice, Bloom has re-engaged the topic by writing about
how artistic practices are re-visualizing the Arctic and Antarctic.
Glasberg is working on a book on U.S. geopolitics, literature, and
visual culture of Antarctica, and visited the continent with the
National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists and Writers Program in
2005.[8]
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
Next page
|
