Elizabeth Leane

Nationalism in Today’s Antarctic

Whilst nationalism is a recognised force globally, its framing is predicated on experience in conventionally occupied parts of the world. The familiar image of angry young men waving Kalashnikovs means that the idea that nationalism might be at play in Antarctica has to overcome much instinctive resistance, as well as the tactical opposition of the keepers of the present Antarctic political arrangements. The limited consideration of nationalism in Antarctica has generally been confined to the past, particularly “Heroic-Era” and 1930s–1940s expeditions. This article addresses the formations of nationalism in the Antarctic present. Antarctic nationalism need not present in the same shape as nationalisms elsewhere to justify being called nationalism. Here it occurs in a virtual or mediated form, remote from the conventional metropolitan territories of the states and interests concerned. The key aspect of Antarctic nationalism is its contemporary form and intensity. We argue that given the historic difficulties of Antarctic activities, and the geopolitical constraints of the Cold War, it has only been since the end of that Cold War that a more muscular nationalism has been able to flourish in Antarctica. Our assessment is that there at least 11 bases upon which Antarctic nationalism might arise: (i) formally declared claims to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica; (ii) relative proximity of Antarctica to one’s metropolitan territory; (iii) historic and institutional associations with Antarctica; (iv) social and cultural associations; (v) regional or global hegemonic inclinations; (vi) alleged need in relation to resources; (vii) contested uses or practices in Antarctica; (viii) carry-over from intense antipathies outside Antarctica; (ix) national pride in, and mobilisation through, national Antarctic programmes; (x) infrastructure and logistics arrangements; or (xi) denial or constraint of access by one’s strategic competitors or opponents. In practice of course, these are likely to be manifested in combination. The risks inherent in Antarctic nationalism are the risks inherent in unrestrained nationalism anywhere, compounded by its already weak juridical situation. In Antarctica, the intersection of nationalism with resources poses a particular challenge to the regional order and its commitments to shareable public goods such as scientific research and environmental protection.

Introduction: the cultural turn in Antarctic Studies

The previous issue of The Polar Journal marked the fiftieth anniversary of the entry into force of the Antarctic Treaty. Amongst its other achievements, the Treaty enshrines science as the “currency of influence” in the continent. It is not surprising, then, that for much of the intervening half-century, Antarctic research has been dominated by science, although fields that relate directly to the concerns of the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS), such as politics, law, tourism and environmental management, have also produced a considerable body of work. The flipside of this has been a comparative dearth of scholarship within the social sciences and humanities. In my own field of literary criticism, for example, the standard MLA database of academic work records only seven publications prior to 1995 that list “Antarctic” or its cognates as keywords. This was, no doubt, due partly to a lack of access to the continent for researchers outside the sciences, but also perhaps to a sense that the “continent for science” held little of interest to those working in the social sciences and humanities, and vice versa. Things have changed markedly in the last 10 or 15 years. This period has seen a surge of interest in Antarctic matters from researchers within a wide range of non-scientific disciplines. And, more recently, there are signs that this group of scholars is beginning to coalesce into a community – members of which retain one foot in their own discipline and the other in “Antarctic studies.” One obvious sign of this is the journal you are reading. Another is the inauguration of the Social Sciences Action Group (SSAG) of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), which aims (among other things) to facilitate exchange between Antarctic scholars working within the social sciences and humanities. A third is the organization of conferences specifically devoted to Antarctic research within the arts, social sciences and humanities. It is the growth of this community and its body of scholarship that led me to entitle this issue of The Polar Journal “The cultural turn in Antarctic Studies.” The term “culture” here is intended broadly, covering not only studies of artistic

‘Scott of the Antarctic’ on the German Stage: Reinhard Goering's Die Südpolexpedition des Kapitäns Scott

Reinhard Goering’s play Die Sudpolexpedition des Kapitans Scott (1929) tells the story of the famously tragic British polar expedition led by Robert F. Scott in 1911–12. As the first public staging of the story, the play created considerable controversy in Britain when it premiered in Berlin in 1930. A late Expressionist drama, it offered perspectives on the expedition quite different to those coming out of Scott’s homeland. In this article, Hanne Nielsen and Elizabeth Leane contextualize the play within Goering’s own career; outline its performance history; examine its reception in both Germany and Britain; and analyze the play text in terms of its innovative treatment of Scott’s story.

Charismatic krill? Size and conservation in the ocean

ABSTRACT The open ocean is an alien place for human beings and for most of history it has been studied using very indirect means. A great deal of what we know about animals that live on land, from ants to elephants, is based on centuries of direct natural history observations of animals alive and in situ. There is no such body of observation of marine animals. Most of what we know about animals in the ocean comes from studying dead animals, collected in nets towed through ocean depths that we can rarely observe. Marine biological knowledge is flavored by the material we have to work with and this, in turn, is affected by the terminology that early scientists used in an attempt to describe the strange world that their nets revealed. Despite the recent development of more sophisticated ways of investigating the ocean, many marine scientists continue to adopt nineteenth-century terminology and approaches (such as the use of the term zooplankton and the use of plankton nets), and this colors interpretation of the results of oceanographic studies. Using Antarctic krill Euphausia superba as an example, we suggest that the perception amongst both scientists and the general public of krills small size, passivity, and lack of individuality has led to their being treated less like animals themselves than as background habitat for other animals. Because krill have such a central role in the Antarctic ecosystem and are the subject of a large fishery, these assumptions may have serious consequences for krill themselves and the conservation of the Antarctic region as a whole.

The Adelie Blizzard : the Australasian Antarctic Expedition's neglected newspaper

To prevent boredom and restlessness during early Arctic and Antarctic over-wintering expeditions, leaders often encouraged ‘cultural’ activities, one of the most successful of which was the production of newspapers. Expedition members contributed poetry, short fiction, and literary criticism as well as scientific articles and accounts of their daily activities. These newspapers provide an important insight into the experiences and attitudes of the men who took part in the expeditions. In some cases, the newspaper would be published on the expeditions return, as a means of publicity, fund-raising, and memorialisation. The most famous example is the South Polar Times, the newspaper produced by Robert Falcon Scotts two expeditions. Other polar newspapers remain unpublished and unexamined. This article focuses on the Adelie Blizzard, the newspaper of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911–14, led by Douglas Mawson. Despite Mawsons efforts, the Adelie Blizzard was never published, and is rarely discussed in any detail in accounts of the expedition. The aim of this article is to address this neglect, by examining the genesis, production and attempted publication of the Adelie Blizzard.

Making music on the march: sledging songs of the 'heroic age' of Antarctic exploration

During the so-called ‘heroic age’ of Antarctic exploration (c.1897–1922), various parties of men invented songs to aid the act of sledging and to provide a mental diversion from the monotony of the task and the physical demands it made on the human body. Songs composed in this uniquely polar musical genre typically included rhyming lyrics that were highly motivational and expressed a united identity. The lyrics were usually set to the melodies of popular songs of the day. When voiced in unison by men out ‘on the march,’ sledging songs could help to promote team synchronisation and cohesion, and give the act of sledging (as well as the expeditions as a whole) a stronger sense of purpose and meaning. The singing of such songs, therefore, contributed in a very practical way to the overall success of many Antarctic expeditions of the ‘heroic age’. This article examines three sledging songs dating from this period of Antarctic exploration and investigates the historical context in which they were created and performed. It also considers what these songs reveal about the experiences of the men who participated in the sledging journeys and their earliest perceptions of the Antarctic environment.

Scott at the Opera: interpreting Das Opfer (1937)

In November 1937, an unusual work premiered at the Hamburg State Opera. Entitled Das Opfer (“The Sacrifice”), the one-act opera tells the story of Robert F. Scott’s last expedition, focusing on the famous final moments of Lawrence Oates. While the action features only four main characters, a large chorus – dressed for much of the time in penguin costumes – comments on events. The opera was an adaptation of an award-winning and controversial play by the eccentric expressionist poet Reinhard Goering. The libretto was written by Goering, who committed suicide not long after its completion – about a year before the first performance. The score was by composer Winfried Zillig – a student of Arnold Schoenberg and promoter of his radical modernist 12-tone technique. Subsequent descriptions of Das Opfer and its reception have been remarkably varied. Some commentators assert the play was quickly banned by the National Socialists due to its pro-British content and “degenerate” 12-tone score. Others argue that this version of events was invented post-war in order to distance Zillig from the Nazi regime, which actually embraced his work, including Das Opfer. Given that Das Opfer was probably the first professional musical response to Scott’s last expedition, and certainly the first operatic performance of the story, it is surprising that no in-depth contextual account of the work is available. The aim of our research is to provide an analysis of this opera – historical, textual and musical – that is both relevant to an Antarctic studies readership and accessible to English-speaking readers. In doing so, we suggest tentative answers to some questions raised by this intriguing musical work: How was Scott’s expedition, which has so often been tied to ideas of Britishness, adapted for German audiences? And what significance did the opera’s Antarctic setting hold in this context?

Two pages of Xavier Mertz's missing Antarctic diary: a contextualization and reconstruction

ABSTRACT. Douglas Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition (1911–1914) has been portrayed in various narratives, usually with a focus on the Far-Eastern Sledging Journey from which Mawson made the epic trek back to the main base at Cape Denison alone, after the deaths of his companions, Xavier Mertz and Belgrave Ninnis. His is the sole eyewitness account of that sledging journey in 1912–1913, except for two handwritten pages of Mertz’s diary, reproduced in Mawson’s The home of the blizzard; two typed, imperfect copies of the diary, transcribed before it disappeared; and another transcript of the two pages published in the German edition of Mawson’s book. This article traces the early journey of that missing diary and, drawing also on the available transcripts, re-interprets the content of those two pages. The content is compared with corresponding passages in associated documents and the subjectivity and limitations of these documents, when consulted for research purposes,are discussed.

A flight of the imagination: Mawson’s Antarctic aeroplane

When Douglas Mawson planned his Australasian Antarctic Expedition (1911–14) he took advantage of newly available technology. His proposal to use an aeroplane for reconnaissance of unexplored regions in Antarctica was an innovative strategy, a first in polar exploration. He ordered a French‐designed Robert Esnault‐Pelterie (REP) two‐seater monoplane from Vickers Ltd in England. When a test flight in Adelaide ended in a crash, Mawson was forced to revise his plans. He took the engine and fuselage south to use as a motorized sledge or “air‐tractor”. This paper details the monoplane’s history, including conflicting interpretations of the crash. It outlines the optimistic preparation for the aircraft’s alternative role as a motor sledge in Antarctica, its disappointing performance and its eventual abandonment near Mawson’s Huts at Commonwealth Bay. Finally, it documents clues that have prompted a renewed search for this important historical artefact. Summer projects to locate and salvage it, using ice‐penetrating radar and other detection methods, have been run in conjunction with other conservation projects conducted by the Mawson’s Huts Foundation. We draw on archival research and new discoveries to piece together the fragmented history of the AAE’s monoplane.

Placing Women in the Antarctic Literary Landscape

References Bloom, Lisa. 1993. Gender on Ice: American Ideologies of Polar Expeditions. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Chipman, Elizabeth. 1986. Women on the Ice: A History of Women in the Far South. Carlton: Melbourne University Press. Darlington, Jennie. 1956. My Antarctic Honeymoon: A Year at the Bottom of the World; As Told to Jane McIlvaine. New York: Doubleday. Dodds, Klaus. 2002. Pink Ice: Britain and the South Atlantic Empire. London: I. B. Tauris. Rothblum, Esther D., Jacqueline S. Weinstock, and Jessica Morris, eds. 1998. Women in the Antarctic. New York: Harrington Park. ❙