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Refusing History at the End of the Earth: Ursula Le Guin's "Sur" and the 2000-01 Women's Antarctica Crossing Author(s): Elena Glasberg Source: Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Spring, 2002), pp. 99-121 Published by: University of Tulsa Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4149218 . Accessed: 09/10/2013 16:19
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Refusing Historyat the Endof the Earth: and the 2000-01 UrsulaLe Guin's"Sur" AntarcticaCrossing Women's
ElenaGlasberg DukeUniversity
In October 2000 two women began a sledding expedition to cross the Antarctic continent without mechanical aid. Their goal was far from a first. Ernest Shackleton attempted the feat in 1914. After his ship was crushed by the ice, Shackleton became famous not for crossing the continent but for simply surviving. The men of later eras successfullyendured crossingsboth mechanized and on foot and ski. Other Antarctic achievements-circumnavigation, overwintering, and cross-continental overflight-have all been accomplished.' So why, at the outset of a new century,were these women pulling sleds across the vast and inhospitable ice, when continental crossing had been repeatedly achieved? I want to approach this question by placing this most recent example of repetition compulsion at world'send in the context of a largerconcern with the problem of "makinghistory"for feminism and, in a related sense, for postcolonial studies. Feminism and the postcolonial are both invoked in "Sur,"Ursula Le Guin's 1982 exploration hoax in which a partyof South American women achieve the South Pole in 1909, two years before the official claim recordedby Roald Amundsen of Norway. The title "Sur" suggestslayersof Sur is for feminist and discourses. meaning Spanish for south, postcolonial with Antarctic linking exploration to the history of singular economy Le over territory. Guin's "south"also plays off geopolitical power struggle the title South, Shackleton's 1919 account of his expeditions, indicating both her indebtedness to normative history and her intention to rewrite that history or, better, to reroute its focus on first-worldcenters of culture and on Europeanagents to a consideration of history from the perspective of its southern hemispheric other.2 Sur, or south, finally corresponds to Antarctica, the seventh continent, a place devoid of indigenous human population and almost entirely ice-covered. While occupying an enormous landmass,Antarctica has nonetheless remained marginal to the struggles of humanity. Le Guin chooses Antarctica as setting for her critique of a lack Europeandominated history not in the least because of the territory's of direct significance in that very history. Despite the attempts of explor99
ersandwriters to interpolate the frozen continentinto the annalsof imperialconquest, Antarctic hasheld a largely value,and symbolic exploration those who have pursued it have done so with minimalgovernment support. Antarctica andsince its arrival camequitelate to the scene of cultures has remained at best.Yetas a spatialized symbolof time,of the marginal lateness of the hour,andof the emergency of the needforthe preservation of futurepossibilities as a cool site,if forculture, the South Pole operates the history of the surrounding youwill,forthe oftenoverheated arguments movements Western both patriarchal and colonial.It dominance, against is this vexedtemporality-where firstsandresisoriginsareneveractually tancemustbecomeoriginary-thatthe womenwho mostrecentlycrossed the ice in 2000-01 inhabit.That their inhabitation of Antarctica is less aboutspaceor the materiality of the continentthanit is aboutinhabiting time is one of the centralissuesthis essayconsiders. Bothfeminism havedeveloped ascritiques of a hisandthe postcolonial toricalnarrative is often that findsthemontologically belated.Feminism understood as the movementproduced to countera masculinized historical normativity, muchasthe postcolonial arrives late-after the breakup of The andknowledge empire-to both politicalconsciousness production.3 of thesecriticaldiscourses arises fromtheircomplexrelation to the impact historiesthat cast them as coming after.Feminism often pursues foremothersto balancethe temporal while of fathers, founding preeminence forthe powerof precessionary civistudiesargues indigenous postcolonial lizationsand subaltern The effectof suchworkhas been somesubjects. what paradoxical: both feministand postcolonial studiesresistdominant discourses alternative models for knowledge yet by inserting production, they can also reifydominanthistoryin theirrelianceuponoriginnarratives as the sourceof theircritique. This tensionbetweencomplicity and resistance is a feature of the retemporalizing historical of each. critiques The problem is thus built into the of comingafter,or of belatedness, criticalprojectsof feminismand postcoloniality. But any first,even the firstdiscovery of the South Pole, actuallycomesat the end of a seriesof andthe timingof events;boththe territorial byAntarctica spaceoccupied its placementin historyillustrate are alsoendthe waysthat beginnings the end of an Antarctica's and makes concrete discovery ings. symbolizes extendedhistoryof Western civilization's of the globe.It was exploration to declaredin 1895 by the BritishRoyalGeographic Society be the last unknownterritory and achievement of on earth.The subsequent pursuit its most geographically remote location, the South Pole, in the years between1900and 1912constitutes the "Heroic of Antarctic exploAge"4 rationandcoincides of a modernist with the risein Euro-America program
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aimed at total global knowledge.5Such complete knowledge of the earth seemed within reach at the turn of the last century, and the South Pole represented its literal achievement. However, the sense of finishing the globe has been recast at the turn of the twenty-first century as a story of environmental degradationon a planet made smallerby the accumulation of knowledge in excess of its object. Antarctica in the twenty-firstcentury is thus a symbol of twinned hope and despair.On the one hand, it symbolizes desire for an uncomplicated human capacity for advancement and ingenuity.On the other hand, its metageographyas the last place on earth representsthe limit of possibility for colonialism: it is a frozen wasteland that according to Western notions of embodied presence in real time cannot be profitablyinhabited. Many of these conflicting ideas attending the territorywere fully in play by the 1890s. Few expected discoveries of temperate land, and imperial dreams (and nightmares) of lost races hidden in the interior of the continent lived mostly in the pages of literature.6However, the dreams of empire operated on many levels and with little attention to details of place. The interior of Antarctica remained a blank space on the map of empire, and there were men whose business it was to fill in those maps. The "Heroic Age" commenced with the revival of interest in Antarctica around 1900 and ended before the era of mechanization and aerial recognizance beginning in the late 1920s. Its colonial modes of knowledge were limited by the ability of the human body to withstand the environment. Human inhabitation was its goal, experience its method, and the footstep-the mark of embodied movement and progressupon the terrainbecame its prime symbol. The most significant event of the Heroic Age was the 1911-12 "race"to the South Pole between Roald Amundsen of Norway and Robert Falcon Scott of Great Britain. That race proved fatal to Scott, who froze to death with four of his men after having reached a pole already staked by Amundsen with the Norwegian flag. This celebratedcompetition was motivated by all the familiarelements that shaped exploration history:the culturesof nationalism, imperialscience, and male adventure.7 The materialfacts of the race to the pole are as easy to trace as tracksin fresh snow. Amundsen dogsleddedfrom the Bay of Whales beginning on 19 October, attaining the pole on 11 December 1911, and returningsafely to base. Scott manhauledhis sleds, attaining the pole on 17 January1912, five weeks after Amundsen. The British team was caught in a blizzard twenty miles from a food depot. The entire polar team froze to death in or near their tents. ErnestShackleton, Scott's protegee, located and removed the corpses the following summer.Scott's diary was found with his body; his last act had been to write in it. But while Amundsen and his adapta-
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won the race,even as knowledgetion of Inuitpolarsurvival techniques disriveted asLeGuinremains ablea polarhistorian by the storyof Scott's that to puta heroicspinon an expedition havemanaged The British aster. historianshave pointed out seemed perverselyplanned for failure.8 Amundsen's linkedin this history. Heroismand failureseem inseparably in the northpolarsnowsa few years endedwith his disappearance career to be firstto failedattempt whileShackleton's afterhis Antarctictriumph, of survival as a glorious crossthe Antarcticcontinenthas been rewritten of his own making.It seemsthat, in the a disaster whatwasnevertheless Le the heroism. the greater the failure, the greater annalsof exploration, of the Guin exploitssuch ironiesin the officialhistoryof the "conquest" between South Pole by insertingher women'sexpedition temporally andhis 1911-12failedpolarattempt. Scott'sinitial 1902-04expedition focusedon the Antarcticexploration from"official" While narratives Le Guin'sfantasy of polarexploration, men, techniques,and hardships revisionism. Herchiefpremise-what historical raises issues aboutfeminist the South Pole?-projects,as if SouthAmericanwomenhad discovered onto Antarcticexploration.9 circumstances" Scott put it, "verydifferent at his disappointment to reference usedthis phrase While Scott originally circumstances" different at the pole, "very his belatedarrival opensupfor arenaof competing,multiplehistoriesfor any single Le Guin a broader event. Most crucially,"Sur"presentsthe possibilityof non-European in themas actors claimto historical women's considering knowledge, prior written such in as not do even when appearrecognizable they history overthe probaoverthe pastof feminism, annals.Muchdebatenow rages of and status the of alliances and feminism, originary composition bility others and the movement with some factions(or individuals) claiming Le of its out of accounts written to have been Guin's founding.'o claiming for any feministfutures fiction has profoundimplications destabilizing of feminist accounts it complicates In particular, beingpresently produced. if the now calls the omit what that especially academy history subalterns, Le Guin'ssuspiciontoward are not accountedfor originally. subalterns at theirown thatplacetheirauthors ornarratives autochthonous ontology, and postfor subaltemist, feminist, might proveproductive beginnings, of standard both againstthe presumptions colonialtheorizing historyand the tension on focuses of "Sur" revisionisms. withincompeting Myanalysis of repetition, andthe techniques of reform betweenthe possibilities posing a pathto the pole thatis disas:do the womendemonstrate suchquestions Can tinct in intent,execution,andeffectfromthatof the menof history? comrefuse the and arrival of Le Guinprojecta feminist yet fantasy prior of conquest? And, to extendthe historiteleologies plicitiesof masculine its ownprediscuss how can feminism at the heartof "Sur," cal metaphor
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or nonexistence? In other words, how can feminism tell its own origin story? My investigation of the politics and effects of Le Guin's retemporalizing of history is organizedinto two parts:first, I demonstrateLe Guin's engagement with the archive of British "Heroic Age" exploration narrative, focusing on the footprint as symbol of Western civilization'squest for total global knowledge. Second, I discussfeminist and postcolonial historiography in relation to such foundational history. In particular,I move from acknowledgment of the risk Le Guin as first-worldauthor runs of merely reinscribinga global feminist discourseantipathetic to subalternistpolitics to an examination of how feminist and subalternist historiographic impulsesconfront their own limits in the gesture to become both foundational and global-or to be both origin and end of a teleological process. From the vantage point of the shifting contemporary,Le Guin's feminist parableof twenty years ago evinces not only the temporal disunity within total global knowledge, but also feminism'sown strugglewith origins and originaryacts. The problem of time as evidenced by strugglesover priority that take shape in acts in the material register of renaming and redoing (the women's crossing) and in imitation and parody ("Sur")is also a problem of knowing, and for feminism a problem of self-recognition of its own vexed origins in time. Footprints Apparitional "Sur"parodies the genre of the narrative of exploration, as its subtitle, "The Summary Report of the Yelcho Expedition to the Antarctic, This reportcarefullyconstructs a realistic account of 1909-10," suggests.11 a discovery of the South Pole by a group of nine upper-class, adventure-seekingSouth American women, who consciously follow the example of the established polar explorers Amundsen, Scott, and Shackleton. With the aid of a secret male benefactor,on pretense of a pleasure cruise, the group sails south from Chile to set up operations at Ross Island on the Antarctic peninsula, previously the base of the Scott expeditions. A smaller contingent of four decides to search for the pole. Hauling their own sledges, the women reach the pole on 22 December 1909, two years before Amundsen and, of course, Scott. They are picked up the following summerby the crew of the Yelcho. Upon returninghome, the women pack away the diaries of their exploration and discovery and continue with their conventionally domestic lives, never to announce to the world their attainment of the pole. While the narrative contains suggestions of having been edited at least once through the years by the narrator herself, it remains conjectural about the means by which the narra-
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tive madeits wayfroman Argentineattic circa1910 to the pagesof one of the world's bestknownforums fornew fictionin 1982. This secret historyrevealedtoo late to affect the courseof history of enablesLe Guin to divertthe path of the Anglo-American narrative fromits traditional celebration of the masculine achievement exploration of a geographic goal towarda critiqueof the problematic legacyof the Evenminordetailssuggest of HeroicAge.12 the depthof Le Guin's critique northernhemispheric domination. Forexample,the ship that European the womento andfromthe pole is namedYelcho, whoseArgentine brings Shackleton's men in 1914.Le stranded reallydidrescue captainLuisPardo southerngeopoliticalpower Guin thus thematizesthe northern'versus overthe Antarctic. "Second-world" nations southern struggle hemispheric were like Argentina and Chile, although closerto the site of Antarctica, writtenout of the imperial narrative anddiscovery. of exploration largely But these nationswerenot withouttheirown historyof colonialinterest It is into this extendedhistoryof geopolitical over in Antarctica. struggle in whichfirstarrival, territorial and have territory supersession possession, playeda majorrole that Le Guin insertsher own claim to Antarctica's islands" "dubious capes,suppositious (p. 257) and symboliclandscapes. And like the claimsmadeby competing nations,Le Guin foundshersin of expeditionandpublishing the well-established of the Heroic practices Age. is the journal as literary Centralto thesepractices andscientific record, and no polarexplorer's to Le Guin than that of pen wasmoreimportant is overwritten with the narrative traScott. "Sur" fascination by LeGuin's of detailsprovided accounts by Scott'spublished jectoryand exploration his time on the ice: TheVoyage his 1902-04 of theDiscovery chronicling journalaccountof the doomed1911-12 expeditionand his posthumous These books document the paradoxical aloneness andcolleexpedition." Antarctic Heroic vastsurof the the Age, giality Throughout exploration. with the sledgeand ski tracksand boot face of Antarcticawas marked their southto the pole and then retraced printsof the men who explored trails north to report their discoveries.British,French,Russian,and vied forgeographic of the American andscientificknowledge expeditions last continent.ReadingScott'snarratives, one findsthat this continent, wasseemingly seventimesthe sizeof Texas, that the explorers so crowded traced intersected and each others' with, (cited), inevitably sighted paths in the ice. Paradoxically, in thismostextreme on earth,explorwilderness ers relied upon and expectedto encounterthe marksof other human of previous of the marks beings,andthe sightingandsupersession explorfor ersweredulyreported in expedition to Scott, instance,refers journals. of former the "benefitwhich we had derivedfromstudyingthe records
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Polar voyages," projecting himself into these records by asserting in his own narrativethat "the first duty of the writer was to his successors"(The Voyageof the Discovery,p. vii). As explorer, researcher,and writer, Scott envisions exploration as patriarchal paternity, a legacy of connecting marksbetween successive individual explorers,each of whom contributes through repetition and individual advancement towardfinal knowledge of the globe. Le Guin's powerfulrevision of exploration history in "Sur" arisesin part from her ability to interruptthe patriarchalpaternity of masculine succession by crafting her narrator,now a grandmother,as simultaneously the successor and predecessorof Scott. Troping Scott's detailing of the techniques of provisioning and of the grueling work of polar exploration, Le Guin presentsthe women hauling their sledges,building supplycairns, taking sightings, and becoming snowblind and exhausted. As a memberof the female exploratoryteam exclaims, "if Scott can do it, why can't we?"(p. 258). For Le Guin, however, the ability to follow in Scott's tracks is only valuable in so far as it engendersa critiqueof the idea of heroic arrival.The last wordsof the anonymousnarrator's exploration journalread,"weleft no footprints, even" (p. 273). In her character'srefusal to leave a readable trail, Le Guin undoes the masculine teleology of exploration in which explorers reproduce themselves by beckoning the arrival of their successors. The question is, does Le Guin foreclose a future for feminist and subaltern resistance by inventing what some historians would define as an "ephemeral"archive?14 If the women's expedition does not leave footprints, then what can it leave as a history?How are we to understandthe possibilities of a history so unreadableby a world outside the restricted circle of the subalternactors? "family" Importantly,the metaphor of the footprint, the mark across the ice, stands also for the mark across the page, particularlythose references so aptly called footnotes that representthe construction of a deed in the context of history. In declining the exploration protocol of publishing their journals,the women leave neither narrative,footnotes, nor footprints. Le Guin, nevertheless, employs the central metaphor of the footprint to suggest the complexity and significance of the decision of her narrator to leave her mark neither on the continent nor in history.15The South American amateurs discover a set of "footprints standing some inches above the ice" on the high polar plateau. The narratorexplains, "in some conditions of weather the snow compressed under one's weight remains when the surroundingsoft snow melts or is scoured away by the wind; and so these reversedfootprintshad been left standing"(pp. 267-68). Here Le Guin picks up Scott's trail, for her narrator's description of these unusual stems from Scott's discussion of this distinctly polarphefootprints directly
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nomenon and his repeated of the techniqueof tracingthe deployment the trailsof the outbound The uncanny of by returning ability party party. the Antarcticenvironment to preserve even the mostinsignificant human tracewasoften noted in expedition ForLe Guin,theseapparijournals.16 aboutthe purpose, tional, disconnected symbolize misgivings footprints as history.Not only do the women methods,and goals of exploration choose in a varietyof waysnot to followin Scott'sfootsteps, butthe symbolic footprintsof history stand reversedand disarticulated, leading nowhere. would have been impossible, moreover, FollowingScott's footprints, since the landmapped Scott in 1902 had by already changedby the time the womencame to see it. The women sight the "Barrier at the place whereCaptainScott'sparty, a in the vast wall of ice, had finding bight ashore" discover "sheer and that the cliffs and azure 265). gone They (p. violet water-worn eaves" of the Barrier were"asdescribed, butthe location had changed" ice shelfhas deranged the landscape (p. 261). The unstable of Scott'snarrative/map. If the womenhad plannedto use Scott'sjournal of the areato navigatetheirown wayto the pole, they wouldhave found the expectedlandmarks askew. Scott described his Antarctic; the women mustfind theirown wayon the mutable ice. Yet the women'sprogress to the pole is measured againstthat of the of which reader is well Not the aware. "real" history only do Scott's journal entriesprovidereference for the buton the fantasy points expedition, continentthe womendiscover remains. This archaeological all-preserving of occasioned a when journalistic phenomenon preservation outpouring Scott reconnoitered his former hut builtduring In the 1902-04expedition. 1911Scott foundhis formerly a state habitation in of ruin, snug preserved asshelter. filledwithsnowandunusable He is "depressed" by the "desolate condition" of the hut andbythe lackof civilization evincedin the neglect. of a . . 15 such immediate [his] (Diaries, ing duty by "simple predecessors" For the of a text for his readable successor Scott, 1911). January preparing is as important as the proper of the hut:the hut represents upkeep England, home andcivilization, an oasison an unfamiliar and its mainlandscape, tenanceemblematizes colonization. Scott'ssenseof his monument having been defiledand his subsequent are recastby Le spiritual"oppression" scene.The text of the hut provides Guin in her own hut-reconnaissance an opportunity to critique the methodsandend effectsof imperial exploration:"the largestructure built by CaptainScott'spartystood, looking anddrawings his book"(pp.261that illustrate justas in the photographs The women the wood abandoned artificial structure, 62).1' approach the of ice and and surrounded rock, against background by inquisitive pena sight,to analogize fromcolonialhistory, of a forguins.They encounter
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mer settlement, deserted and overrun with natives/penguins. The hut functions (for Scott as well as the women) as a mementomoriof imperialism, a reminderof the passing of human endeavor at the very scene of its self-defined triumph. Although the history and dignity of the lone outpost impressthe women familiarwith its aspect from Scott's journals, their changed circumstances displace the written image. Placed in the women'sculturalcontext, the hut represents something more deeply inadequate than a defiled haven. The narratorcontinues her description:"The area around [the hut] ... was disgusting, a kind of graveyardof seal skins, seal bones, penguin bones, and rubbish, presided over by the mad, screaming skua gulls" (p. 262). The as another expedition member refers to the hut, repre"slaughterhouse," sents a hell on Antarctica created in the wake of Scott's environmental disruption. Le Guin's explorers invoke an image of apocalyptic renewal when during a discussion of how to make use of the abandoned hut one woman proposes they "set fire to it" (p. 262). The women find "the interior of the hut [to be] less offensive but very dreary.. . . It was dirty,and had about it a mean disorder.A pound tin of tea was standing open ... a lot of dog turdswere underfoot-frozen of course, but not a great deal improved by that. . . . But housekeeping, the art of the infinite, is no game for amateurs" (p. 262). Beneath the humor of the genteel adventuresses'disapproval, Le Guin embeds a more seriousmessagefor her 1982 audience witnessing, among other growing disasters,the destruction of the ozone layer above the South Pole." "Housekeeping,"in the context of the women's world (and that includes the far reaches of Antarctica), is a prime goal in an environmentally conscious age. Incidental to the women's refusal to leave marksis their refrainingfrom leaving garbage.Le Guin's description of the women's camp is the story'smost radicaldeparturefrom the realistic imitation of historical exploration narratives evident in the story as a whole: it shifts into a frankly utopian modality, invoking a recognizable U.S.-style, living-with-the-land repertoire of practices. Rather than importingwood for huts or erecting flimsy canvas tents, the women's base camp is built igloo-like into the ice, conforming with the landscaperather than imposing upon it. Instead of the unregulatedslaughterof the native bird and seal population for food, the women subsist on imported rations and a little fishing. In contrast to Scott's militaristic and dystopic "settlement," the vegetarian, egalitarian women adapt ecologically more sound Amer-Indian survival techniques to build their underground"prairiedog village" in the "living ice" (p. 261). Ecology provides Le Guin's major critique of the means and goals of the Scott expedition. Even though Le Guin suppressesmention of the tragedythat befalls Scott until the postscriptof her story, the reader should not be surprisedthat his trail marks, which
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it seems,is going lead to a bad end. History, look so muchlike garbage, nowhere. Histories Untelling is that in masculine What we learnfrom"Sur" historythe exploration the land and when andhow of discovery-who discovers circumstances itself.The South thanthe discovery it-are moreimportant they discover This is circumstances." in "different the housewives American place pole not to say that they see anythingmore than did Scott, for they admit "nothingof any kind markedthe drearywhiteness"(p. 270). In the in the annalsof women'sreactionto the ultimategeographic discovery hisAntarctic of with the whole lies the exploration humanity problem it another to the does not South Pole the discoverer, or, put precede tory: It is an arbitrary pointmarked way,the SouthPole is not to be discovered. of constructed a of feature no kind, space convergence any by site-specific of civbarriers andtime,meaningful only to thosewho createthe artificial the absurdity the womenunderstand ilization.19And most emphatically, or monument, a snowcairn,a tent poleand somekindof mark of "leaving that "anything [they]coulddo, anything[they] flag."They acknowledge awful in that was were, place"(p. 270). Despitethe differinsignificant, and the impliedridiculein leavinga phallic"pole," ence in circumstance at anddefeat LeGuinhasthe womenmimicScott'sfamous cryof defiance 17 January God! This is an awfulplace"(Diaries, the pole:"Great 1912). The women's place. In decliningto publishtheir pole too is an "awful" a narration of priority, the women refuse echoingScott'slanexploration, of the the shift his without interpretation They retracing footsteps. guage new or without of imperial "facts" deeds, "footany offering exploration prints,even"(p. 273). South Pole of historybecomesa textualsite of the material In "Sur" andwho prospers who writeshistory, contentionoverwho makeshistory, and as her narrative. fromany historical setting topic the "end Choosing of the earth,"Le Guin providesan alternativerenditionof the final In place and rational momentsof the regimeof geographical empiricism. The Le Guin offersparadox. and lineartime-keeping, of reason,progress, in its mark makes thus of exploration feministrevision by refusing, history At the sametime, of course,Le Guin some sense, all heroic markings. the engineof progress a feminist herreaders offers belittling utopicfantasy, women have not only that and Westernimperialism by demonstrating "beenthere,done that,"but they have done it in such a way as to foil Most crucially(and probdegradation. exploitationand environmental with (butnot nectask the women to the identify lematically), accomplish erased fromthe histhose culture's Western subalterns, as) already essarily
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torical text of imperialism,whose silence Le Guin refashionsto a subversive end. While the majorityof the women appearto belong to the upper classes, they are conscious of their reliance on the domestic laborof native servantsto cover their temporaryabsences.Awarenessof subalterncultures extends to a borrowingof native Indian culture as the women take expedition names such as "LaAraucana"and the "SupremeInca." Their map names features of the terrain for South American revolutionariessuch as Sim6n Bolivar and Juan Manuel de Rosas. Further,the women identify with the male crew of the Yelcho,asserting that they "were, and are, by birth and upbringing,unequivocallyand irrevocably,all crew"(p. 261). Le focus on Guin's politics of cross-identificationculminates in her narrator's the "backsideof heroism" (p. 261), by which she means not only the actions and agents who are not considered worthy of being historical, but also the entire endeavor to discover the materially useless polar regions. This sense of the problem of history as being shared by privileged Europeans,privileged South American colonials, and native subalternsis at the heart of Le Guin's triumphantfeminist utopianism at world'send. Yet there is something too tidy about the women'sability to be both historically originaryand transcendent. The serviceable silence of the subaltern, the corroborationof male history as the vehicle for inserting female agency, the fantasmatic erasureof women's complicit footprints-all this points to a kind of feminism that contemporaryfeminism has grown to struggleagainst. As fiction, in other words, "Sur"offers a neat solution to the problem of women and subaltern agents in history: they were always there; they simply saw no virtue in becoming "historic."This depiction entails a larger critique of the search for origins, a critique that in turn implicates the very narratives by and through which modern feminism operates.For read as a parableof feminism, the tale insists that we be satisfied with a history in which women remain marginal on the one hand and in which history continues to found itself as textual evidence on the other. If the possibilitiesof feminist history seem constricted at this point, that is by design-both Le Guin's and my own. Feminism'sdesire to imagine itself outside forms of historical domination or, in the terms of the to have followed the footsteps of male history and yet metaphor of "Sur," to have left no garbage,creates an unresolvablecontradiction. Feminism, it seems, must arriveat the same place as masculine historical narrativein orderto produce its own vision of the globe, but in this it is alwaysbelated, traces is femsecondaryto the "fact"of masculine origination. What "Sur" inism's utopic desire to have it both ways, to become the antecedent for matriarchaland male history (others have chosen to assert"prehistorical" forms of official of all be outside and to history. In havgoddess cultures)
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findsitselfunwillingly, often unconing it eitheror both ways,feminism official as it sciously corroborating history-perhaps especially seeksto predate or revisethe masculine structures of historicalnarrative and docuevidence. mentary Readas a parable of feministhistory, then, Le Guin'sfemaleexpedition cannotentirelyescapehistory, and it constitutes in itselfa typeof history. womenleaveno signsthatwillbe recognizable to later AlthoughLeGuin's forone anotheron the ice. Utilizing they do leave inscriptions explorers, the tendencyof the snowand ice to preserve marks, they carveonto distinctive ice formations directionaland inspirational such as messages, "Thiswayout"overa bigarrow pointingthe wayto theirbase.Byrefusing to leavefootprints the womenavoidthe colonialistimplications of those symbolsof the intrusionof cultureinto nature,a naturethat afterthe as havingbeen always-already impactof the footstepmightbe understood of time.The symbols "This waitingforthatmark-the newbeginning way out"anda giantarrow alternatives to the and represent footprint all it represents."Thisway out"is both utopicgesture and a joke on the relation between map and the territory, a trope on the standpointand global knowledgerepresented by the now ubiquitous map depictingan arrow pointingto a locationwith the caption"youare here."(In fact, you are not. Youare"there" in the territory that is in distinctrelationto the map. The territory is actuallybeing createdas you gazeupon the map,which for orientation effectivelyhails each of its successiveviewerssearching into the centerof the mapped on a map field.) What is a helpfulstrategy in a mall turnsmoreabsurdist in popular the images depicting globesusin with a arrow pended space superimposed pointingto a spotmarked "you arehere." LeGuinreprises thesepopular cultural themeson the blankmap of herAntarctica as a wayof suggesting boththe utopicpossibilities of the unwritten and the real cultural limits to such unstoried, place imagining As humorous as moment this we must ask can be, places. might seriously: feminism mark its own exit from the awful circumstances of simply history? Does the movefromofficialnarrative to journal and personal experience somehowrescuefeminism fromits complicities with the disciplinary teleof ologies history?20 My answerto these and other such questionsis, of course,no. The womendiscoverers begin and end their actionsframed by a disciplining Even Le the text found hidden in the attic,is Guin's device, history. plot borne of the methodology of the archiveand in particular invokesthe of an that formed of women's promise "recovery" important history's period own history. In the retemporalization of recovery into discovery of the lost not the preeminence of discovery or archive, butthe text, "Sur" challenges whose name becomes linked the to of historical (or agent gender) proof
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andthusthe significance of events.In the driveto castwomen ownership as originary of historyfind their limit in agents,the feministpossibilities the priority of individualism on which modern Western humanism Le Guin'sutopiaof priorarrival andof the moral,even aesthetic depends. of unnamed and communal subaltern cannothold up superiority speakers underthe material of history, conditions not the leastof whichis the comof the so-called third plicity of white feminismin the subordination In the movefrommaterial world.21 to discursive historyreferenced by the turningof the blankpageof historyinto the blankpageof the women's undiscovered itselfin the veryhistories thatjustiice, feminism implicates fiedimperialism. In fact,the event of the women's in its renarexpedition, of masculine documents the veryhistoryit rativizing history, exploration seeksto critique.A critiqueof the complicitywith historyof an Angloauthortakingon the subjectivities of subaltern characters or European In the positionsmightseemto mostreaders fairlyoffered yet predictable. sectionsthat followI hope to complicatethe critiqueof "Sur's" (and by a normative liberalfeminism's) with implication, complicities historyby the discussion confromone of authorial shifting politicsto a moregeneral sideration of the structural effectsof genreon the production of knowledge. Undisciplining History I havebeenarguing that the problematic of refusing in historyis figured "Sur" the of the South which both the Pole, by iconicity represents geoattainment of globalknowledge andits epistemological limit.To graphical the extent that "Sur" and the knowlquestionsthe value of exploration I have found that its feminist revisionist edgeproduced by it, historyleads to a deadend, or to use a varianton Scott'sdescription of his priorlate arrival at the pole, it "forestall[s]" 17 January (Diaries, 1912) or forecloses a futurefor feministand subaltern resistance. I wantto arguein my conclusionthat this interpretation is not only minebut the story's own.Foras muchas Le Guin's asks readers to with a visionof utopianimpulse identify feminist "Sur" also undercuts its claims to a better To history, way. illustrate thispoint,I willreturn to the momentof geographical in "Sur" completion as the womenassemble at the South Pole:"Whichway?" asksone team memberafterthe pole has been reached."North," is the response.Le narrator "It was a because at that Guin's continues, joke, particular place there is no other direction" (p. 270). In this way,Le Guin inscribesan awareness of the limitsof the historical modethat the narrative has been both imitating andresisting. Northis the direction of hegemonic it power; leadsbackhome,both to the home of empireof the geopolitically dominant north and to the SouthAmerican home of the domesticsphere.To
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the axis of center/periphery returnnorthleavesunchanged by whichthe southis mademinorto Europe. Thisproblem of the superimposition of the northas originary is the subof whatGyanPrakash callsthe "impossibility" ject of recenttheorizations subaltern In a 2000 essayin Nepantla: of writing Views South, from history. has always beenan underlying awareness thatthe project he writes: "There asa full-blooded of 'recovering' the subaltern mustfail,forby subject-agent definitionsubalternity impliesa 'minor' positionthat cannotbe undone the historian's the subaltern ForPrakash, desireto recover retroactively."22 of dominant discourse that historycan by assuming repeatsthe weakness discibe madeinclusive,andthis extendsbut doesnot challengehistory's new mode. The lies not in of whatever the then, accuracy problem, plinary but in the relianceon a historifactshistorians mayfindaboutsubalterns, modeof knowledge In placeof a positivist insistence production. ographic on recoveryPrakashproposesthat we "understand subaltemityas an inside usedin orderto identifythe intractability that surfaces abstraction the dominant system"(p. 288). Understoodthis way, the subaltern becomesthe forcethat turnshistoryagainstitself. thanlinger Suchantidisciplinary violenceis shared by Le Guin.Rather of the subaltern I preon Le Guin'sappropriation fora revisionist history, on the disciplinary fer to understand "Sur" as a meditation limitsof histoforfeminism. In this way,we avoidreproducing someof the less riography The tale'slastline, "weleft usefulmovesin the recentpoliticsof feminism. no footprints, thanjettisoning subalterns even,"rather againfromthe time in its last-minute, anxiousplacement a certainawareof history, registers to history of castingthe subaltern as exterior nessof the problem and,very to Le own she is Guin's Here, telling. epistemologically pulling possibly, crafted the statusher the rugout fromunderher carefully hoax, refusing allowsher accessto a subaltern counterhistory might offer.The literary of historiography foreclose. This viewof fablethat the positivistdemands of historyas what "mighthave/could have been"saved the construction is of disciplinary corroboration andreviewin realtime fromthe indignities a the of Le discontinuLe Guin's Guin proposes precisely power politics. ous past,present,and future,allowingfor a futureto emergefroma past of the SouthPole, women's that, in the caseof SouthAmerican discovery in the time of hisneed not have existedin orderto becomemeaningful the pastof historywhile avoiding tory.In otherwords,Le Guinforestalls of that history. of the possibilities foreclosure to thrusting into the roleof This is not quite equivalent the subaltern of history, whichas Prakash contendsis an "impossible" the "outside" posiis Thisparticular outside tion fromwhichto createa useful counterhistory. Le Guin imagmoreprecisely a before-but not the beforeof prehistory.
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ines a state where those who came before, the indigenouswe might say,are also understood as having their own history, as having also come from somewhere else and therefore as having the potential for a history that is outside history yet not impossible. She does not allow the indigenous to function as the natural (and thus disempowered) origin for culture any more than the story produces an unalloyed nostalgia for Eurocentric exploit as history. The projection of prior historical foundations has the effect of endlessly deferringorigins and of shifting the disciplinaryregister of what constitutes evidence of an historical claim beyond the modern fact of nation or individual and into the possibilities of confounded and cofounded origin for modernity and feminist and postcolonial thought.23 To be sure, Le Guin's story runs the risk of reinscribing the historical power relations she critiquesthroughwhat some might consider a fetishization of a precolonial past, which once imposed guaranteesthe authenticity of those who can make a claim to it. But this is precisely what Le Guin does not do. Her parable against history conflates differences between British, Spanish, and U.S. imperialism while inserting into this history protofeminist figures such as Florence Nightingale (for whom Le Guin's cosmopolitan and well-read South American explorersname a mountain) in the name of the nameless women who may have dreamedof becoming heroic. In this pastiche of influences, nationalism and the desire to colonize do not play a role. While a clever avoidance of specificity certainly is the foundation of "Sur's" utopianism, the story'spolitical force remains. What Le Guin creates in her fantasyof refusinghistory is the possibilityof creating history, of becoming a historical subject not through imitation, but through an intervention into the rational linearity of the mode of history. Like the disarticulated,"reversed" footsteps the women find on the plateau and like their own un-footnoted steps, Le Guin's history of Antarctic exploration stands for the possibility of a history whose temporally distinct features of past, present, and future are discontinuous and jumbled. Le Guin's claim is not to historical veracity or justice or to any material territory.Rather, her claim is on time itself. In this we might say that Le Guin is refusinghistory in favor of this other registerof possibility in and for feminism and postcolonial analysis. Crossing(Out) History But what about those women I left stranded back in the introductory section in their attempt to cross the ice? Of course, they made it successfully across in February2001, months before I managed to arrive at a finished version of this piece. Academic writers are by definition belated, after the fact, even though we do like to imagine ourselves as originators of culture. And it is with the problem of origin and of coming after inher113
narrative ent in all threeof my principleobjects-the hoax exploration criticaldiscourses of the last continent,and the antifoundational "Sur," feminismand the postcolonial-that I want to end this essay.Of these Antarctica that retainsthe greatest for threesets it is perhaps possibilities resistingbeing known as an object of human science or for resisting due primarily to its lack of indigenous fixed in history, becoming populato knowhow to ground a discourse concerntion. It is extremely difficult a humanhistoryandwhosepreing a placethat has so briefandpeculiar linked is onlyproblematically sent andfuture legalandmaterial grounding of origins lacksthe powerful andrightsthat to nation.Antarctica ideology it claimsandshapes. A set to humanity andthe territories nationprovides of international called the AntarcticTreatySystemgoverns agreements the territoryadequatelyfor the present. But on the symboliclevel, andthusopen to fanAntarctica remains unclaimed (if not unclaimable) of the end tasiesof originaswellasfears of belatedness, of the literalization of the world. has usefulness as a symbol andsettingforliterature While the territory's in partbythisessay, the material actsof repetition and beenmademanifest mountain treks,and crossings, circumnavigations, imitation-pole quests, in variousgendered, and numall undertaken overwinterings equipped, I referenced in my introduction remain beredconfigurations-which puzthese acts as a speciesof repetition zling.I went so far as to pathologize of human-geoWhat is it that peopleseek in reenactments compulsion. I think the answer has to do with featsuponthe vast territory? graphical Antarctica'slack of indigenouspopulation.Repetition compulsionis as beinggenerated understood by a need to confrontor completea trauwhile deeplyepistematic event. Antarctica's traumatic humanlessness, (how afterall do we experiencethe place if not disturbing mologically an at leastimported is alsofreeing: endless successions humanity?) through to live out fantasies of individuals areethicallyunencumbered andgroups of an imperial withoutthe consequences of originsand arrivals "coming of nationAntarctica convertsthe leadenrepertoires after." alchemically and alist and imperial territorial conquestinto the goldof humanstriving in the contemporary or harmless, adventure asreflected feel-good progress, fascination with Shackleton's 1914-16survival drama.24 improbable of a globalcatharsis Butrather than seeingtheseactsas manifestations conflictis in which a heavyhumanhistoryof rapaciousness and imperial a of feat,we noninstrumental, merely symbolic by joyful process replaced is to its to that destined fear endlessly begin humanity might repeat "final" in Antarctica. In this morecriticalview,the terrain of Antarctica arrivals of its future. At this juncture cannot sustain the overdetermination devastated and anotherfuturefor Antarctica as the ecologically emerges
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plunderedfrozennature preserve.The avoidance of ecological devastation as well as historical trace is the foundation on which Le Guin builds her feminist utopia. This utopic relation to the Antarctic is echoed by the 2000-01 women'scrossing. But in place of literature,these women use the medium of the Web to representand to map their endeavor to a worldwide audience with little possibilityof a materialrelation to Antarctica. In place of native techniques of sustainablesurvival,the 2000 crossersequip themselves with the latest technologies of satellite communication, lightweight protective clothing, and ski and other transportationgear.Their elaborate website uses narrative, interactive journals, live web cam images, maps, and photos to advertise the women's mission and to link it to individual users. The site (www.yourexpedition.com)invites each user to identify with the remote crossers and their esoteric goal. Users can follow their route and progressas a red line extends graduallyacrossa map of the continent. While the crossersthemselves offerfairlymundane reasonsfor their trek (just to show the human spirit; they have always dreamed of it), the most fascinating aspect of the trek is its utter lack of utility. As I stated at the outset, the crossing was not particularlymomentous as a geographic first nor as a first in adventure (solo treks being grittier). It was certainly a gendered first, perhaps even a gendered remappingof the (virtual) territory. But what type of history-makingis this? Making any grand claim for the feminist significance of the expedition is forced, especially given that the crossers make only the most muted and liberal reference to gender claims as "empowerment"for girls through their vigorous example. Although they identify as American and Norwegian subjects, they make no reference to their trek as symbolic of any nation or group of people. Their website, in fact, makes no reference to polar exploration history and does not provide any backgroundon previousexpeditions. Any context in which the women crossersclaim their firstnessis curiouslylacking. The feminist utopias of "Sur"and the crossersrely, respectively, on a repression of European women's complicity in imperialism and a total refusalof all history but that of the instant web present. This latter evacuation of historical context or, rather,recontextualizationof the Antarctic as a symbol (in this case for empowerment) unattached to nation or history, constructs an Antarctic that functions as a gigantic billboard for a commercialized if historically noninstrumentalizedgoal. The year 2000 crossersuse the idea of traditional, linear history to wring value from the staging of a "first,"and by evacuating the marks of historical context through which Le Guin fashions her meaning in absence of the extrahistorical "fact"ofthe South American women's expedition, the year 2000 crossersclose down the possibilities opened by Le Guin's fable. The year 2000 crossing may in fact be the nightmare of liberal feminism, manifest-
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ing feminism's reliance on imitation and also its historical redundancy. Where Le Guin's women made history and left no footprints, the women crossersleave only footprints and make do without history. NOTES I wouldlike to acknowledge the following orderof their peoplein chronological Wald, help in developingthis article:SusanGubar,RobynWiegman,Priscilla CannonSchmidt,andDanaSeitler. the SouthPole in December reached 1911,fol1 Eversince RoaldAmundsen lowedcloselyby Robert FalconScottof Britain, the raceto stakeout geographical claimsin the Antarctichas remained steady.Edmund Hillaryand VivianFuchs usedmechanical meansto crossthe continentin 1958,while ReinholdMessner in 1990. It is withinthis context that this wasfirstto ski solo acrossAntarctica mostrecentcrossing mustbe placed. American Ann Bancroft andNorwegian Liv Arnesenbecamethe firstwomen to crossthe Antarctic continentin a mechanically trek.Theybegantheir unaided 2001, and ended attemptOctober2000, reachedthe South Pole on 16 January theiradventure on 18 February 2001.Bancroft of previous andArnesen, veterans had fundingfromcorporations such as Volvo, Motorola, and polarexpeditions, Pfizer and returned to muchmajor mediaattention,appearing on GoodMorning America andNBC'sNightlyNews,to namejusttwo.Every aspectof theirjourney hadbeentracked website(www.yourexpedition.com). Theirexpebya sophisticated ditionactually cameshortof its goals(theyhadto abandon efforts 500 milesshort of theiroriginal men (Eirik Sonneland andRolf goal),even whiletwoNorwegian at the sametimeas the women's Bae),trekking team,madethe entirecontinental but withoutthe elaborate Formoreinforcommunication traverse, organization. mationon the adventure of the crossing to othercrossing andcomparisons aspects see John Howard, "TheSouthernTraverse," in Adventure, endeavors, May/June 2001,pp. 31-32. 2 Sir Ernest South WilliamHeinemann, (London: Shackleton, 1919). the analogy of feminism andsubaltern studies 3 I do not wantto overemphasize in anyway,not even in termsof the morespecifictopicI takeup here,of tempothat serveas objectsof study (the subjectivities rality.Feministand subaltern and the discourses in turncreated of objectsof the discourses), by the emergence the academic I amsuggesting noran analogous neithera shared fields,aredistinct; historical I am,however, in certainintersections interested andselfdevelopment. conscious interawarenesses betweenthe two discourses. of Antarctica Greekcivilization and continuesto predates 4 The exploration this day.Voyages or othercivilizations in the southoceansbeyond by Polynesians whatis now the Antarctic circlehavebeenconjectural, basedon the probabilities of smallvesselexpeditions. no material evidenceof thesevoyages exists. However, The Greeksdocumentedtheir conception of terrae australis or the incognita, unknownlandsto the south,in treatises and maps,projecting onto the globea southern landmass to balance the known lands of the northern large hemisphere. But it was not until CaptainJamesCook'ssecond voyage in 1772 that any 116
of the regionwasactually recorded. Cook passedthrough a European knowledge warmsouthernocean into increasingly latitudes towardthe pole frigidsouthern where he wasfinallystopped He declared the ice by ice (andthe threatof mutiny). and the land that mightlay beyondas worthless. unpassable Despitesuch harsh and U.S. expeditions farthersouth British,French,Russian, judgment, explored the eighteenthand nineteenthcenturies.While the broadest throughout geooutlinesof the continentwerefilled in by 1914,and overflights of the graphical 1920sto the 1940srevealed muchof the interior of the land,exploration of the terraincontinuesto this day.Antarctica remains the largest and leastknownof the earth's landmasses. Historiesof Antarcticexploration are quintessentially a point of patriarchal, view, one might argue,centralto Le Guin'smeaningin "Sur." Majorworksof Antarcticexploration The White Road(London: historyincludeRobertKirwan, HollisandCarter, 1959);Norman (New York: Kemp,TheConquest of theAntarctic TheLoneliest Continent New York (Greenwich: Wingate,1956);Walker Chapman, TheLastPlace onEarth Ltd.,1964);RolandHuntsford, Graphic SocietyPublishers, of Antarctic (NewYork: Atheneum,1986).Fora quicksource history, geographic andcurrent environmental datathat is lessfocused on the "heroic" features, past, see JeffRubin,TheLonely Planet Travel Survival Kit (Oakland, California: Lonely PlanetPublications, 1996). See Louise and Transculturation Pratt, Imperial Mary Eyes: TravelWriting 5 andNew York: turn" in geography (London 1992),on the "continental Routledge, in conjunction with the modernist to totalization or the movetoward a aspiration and hierarchicalized worldknowledge. For the idea of rational,interconnected, andspaceandtime, see StephenKern,TheCulture modernity of TimeandSpace, 1880-1918(Cambridge: Harvard Press,1983).Forthe ideaof the social University or creation of continents withinthe mapped W. Lewis, mapping globe,see Martin TheMyth A Critique ed. LewisandKaren E. Wigen of Continents: of Metageography, andLosAngeles: of California Press,1997). (Berkeley University 6Antarctic runscoextensive with scientific literary fantasy exploration, usually narrative. Forexample, Allan Poe, in The feedingoff published exploration Edgar Narrative Gordon interestin U.S.-led of Arthur Pym (1838), usedcontemporary of the Antarctic of 1828-32to concocthis exploration by the WilkesExpedition own hoax visionof the SouthPole. See FaunoCordes, "A Bibliographic Tourof AntarcticFiction," AB Bookman 82, No. 21 (21 November1988), 2029Weekly, list of Antarcticfiction; and my "Antarcticas of the 36, for a chronological Indiana (Diss. Imagination" University1995) for U.S. Antarcticfiction. For a broadtreatment of cultural and literary criticism of polarexploration, see Francis I MayBeSome Time: IceandtheEnglish and Boston: (London Spufford, Imagination Faber andFaber, is the only criticto engagea feministreading of 1996).Spufford polar imageryin canonicalBritishfiction, such as MaryShelley'sFrankenstein the gendered of LadyFranklin, the wife of the (1819), or to consider significance lost polarexplorer Sir JohnFranklin, whosearcticexpeditiontragedy transfixed Britain fromthe 1840sto 1854.Twoworks on Antarctic landprimarily focusing andpoetry areWilliamLenz,ThePoetics A Study scape,aesthetics, of theAntarctic: in Nineteenth-Century American CulturalPerceptions (New Yorkand London: Antarctica: Garland,1995) and Paul Simpson-Housley, Exploration, Perception,
117
1992).Until recentlythe tradition (LondonandNew York: Routledge, Metaphor norwomenauthors. neithernon-northern fictionincluded of Antarctic Europeans more is from distinct race to the modern earlier, imaginings. The sanguine pole 7 elevationat an earthly hadonce postulated Columbus upona nipple-like paradise earth.By 1900,however, the southern peronlyfictionwriters tip of a pear-shaped to steeledthemselves Amundsen like Scott and Men sistedin tropical polefantasy. of Thus the burden of paradise. face a regionthey knewwouldbe the antithesis and historicalteleologiesof terminus, revelation,and new worlds geographical boredownon the SouthPole with the overdetermined waitingto be discovered andvoid. ice of its own cap-inhospitable,impenetrable, weight were bad the Scott theymakea goodstory. exploration, expeditions Although 8 thoseon Amundsen on Scott outnumber Booksand articles by at leastthree-toto go to Scott'stragicexpedione. In the realmof fictionthe attentioncontinues of Scott has becomelinkedwith modemsouthpolarimaginings tion. The figure Land(1929), to Crispin in T. S. Eliot,TheWaste fromthe "whiteroad" passage St. Martins Cookbook Press,1984),in whichan L.A. (NewYork, Kitto,Antarctica of living in Scott'shut on the Antarcticcape.Almost manescapesinto fantasies attendevotedisproportionate of Antarctica all the filmsandvideoson the history tion to Scott's expeditions.With such recent and popularofferingsas Beryl 1991),an imaginative Duckworth, retelling Birthday Boys(NewYork: Bainbridge's interestin the sagahas it is clearthat Anglo-American of Scott'slastexpedition, of Scott,see PeterJ. Beck, of British Fora discussion not yet waned. mythologizing Summer1985,pp. Polar "TheLegendof CaptainScott 75 Years Review, After," 604-19. A Record Robert Scott: Falcon Scott, TheDiaries of theSecond of Captain 9Robert Vol.VI (Tylers Antarctic Green,Buckinghamshire, England: 1910-1912, Expedition refer1912. Subsequent Microfilms Ltd., 1968), entryfor 17 January University in the text. encesto datedentrieswillbe citedparenthetically 10 withinacademic of recentdiscussions andcomplexpresentation Fora careful foundational onto feminist of a white,liberalimposition feminism of the critique RaceandGender Anatomies: American see RobynWiegman, Theorizing narratives, DukeUniversity six, "TheAlchemyof Press,1995),especially chapter (Durham: Disloyalty." " Ursula Stories Rose: Short in TheCompass Le Guin,"Sur," (NewYork: Harper in the will be citedparenthetically references andRow,1982),p. 255. Subsequent
text.
of Antarctichoax in which an anonymous the tradition that (1) cannotbe scienmarvelous a a tale of discovery presents author/explorer view or unknown an alternate or (2) presents tificallyeitherprovedor disproved Some of a "lost" the discovery of the event,mostoftenthrough manuscript. history Charles Arthur Gordon Narrative The are (1838), Romyn Pym of examples Poe, Found in a Copper (1887), JamesDeMille,A Narrative Dake,A Strange Discovery At theMountains (1936). of Madness (1899), andH. P.Lovecraft, Cylinder Smith, Elder,and Co., 1913). (London: Scott, The Voyage of theDiscovery 13 will be cited parenthetically the The to references Discovery of Voyage Subsequent in the text.
12Le Guin writesin
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14 Feminism andtheCultural See SusanStanford Friedman, Geographies Mappings: Princeton Press,1998),p. 207. (Princeton: University of Encounter 15Susan Gubar,in "'TheBlankPage'and the Issuesof FemaleCreativity," underCritical 8, No. 2 (1981), 243-63, offersa detailedand persuasive Inquiry, standing of the long history of the imagerylinking blanknessand female Initiallynoting that the male artisthas triedto endeavor/creativity/corporeality. female the usurp potencythroughmythsof male creationin orderto "evade" . .. of acknowledging outof andfrom "humiliation thatit is hewho is really created the difficulty the womanartist thefemale goeson to describe body" (p. 243),Gubar in to a tradition of male in this the has case, (or, trying join specifically explorer) creativityand endeavorthat equatespen with penis and insiststhat womenbe or worksof art of malegenius,musesto malecreativity, eitherpassivereceptacles of the "blank in themselves-the centralmetaphor page." 16This in the ice, essentially man-made marks of sighting andtracing technique reference an imageof followingoneselfbecausethere are no other recognizable as device,the "artificial horizon," by the nameof a navigating points,is matched of the an imageof the projectionof the values and systemsof understanding culture onto an emptyland. explorer's of exploration with whichher readers artifacts history 7Le Guin is referencing hutshave been preserved arelikelyto be familiar. Boththe Scott andShackleton and refurbished for nationalprideand the Antarctictouristtrade.The huts are of the almostlikeshrines makea pilgrimage. treated to whichvisitors Photographs Scott andShackleton huts,of theircontents,andeven of the men of the original havebeenwidelyavailable sinceall earlyexpeditions tookalongtheir expeditions Herbert White South See especially ownphotographers. (1921; Ponting,TheGreat London: Gerald andCo., 1999). Duckworth the best-known features of the Antarcticin among 8The ozonehole is arguably in of a the ozone abovethe south the popular Evidence hole imagination. opening scientistsled by Dr.Susan polarregionwasfirstfoundby a teamof atmospheric with the U.S. NationalMedalof Solomon,workfor which she was recognized with the ozonehole phenomeScience.Solomonhas movedfromher association non to enteringthe Scott-Amundsen debates. in atmospherics, Usingher training a defenseof Scott'smethods andleadership Solomonhasrecently skills, published weather and not to bungling, that his failure wasdue to unusual arguing patterns March: See her TheColdest Scott's FatalAntarctic as manyothershad maintained. YaleUniversity Press,2001). Althoughthe (New Havenand London: Expedition the crisis latestscientificevidenceshowsthat the ozonehole is closingsomewhat, remains one of the defining of the region of the environment in Antarctica features andone thatplaysa centralrolein presentandfuture governance. 19 andlatitude, markers suchas longitude the equator, all geographical Of course andnationalborders andborders of all kindsareequallyartificial. What is interas geographically and hisestingaboutthe Antarcticas a settingis its placement last,a comingat the endof the worldandthe endof time.The SouthPole torically thananyotherpoint asthe convergence of timeandspaceis not anymoreartificial within a metaon the mapped earth,but it does hold a heightenedsignificance of empire, a symbolic valenceexploitedby Le Guinin "Sur." geography
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20 andthe Paradox of Feminist See Myra Criticism," Jehlen,"Archimedes Signs, of the problem of articulation 6, No.4 (1981),575-601,foran earlyandimportant froma positionnecessarily withinhistory. critiquing history betweenpoststructuralist and traditional The debate,roughly scholars drawn, continueswithin the disciplines. For a good discussion of the "poststructuralist turn," see Michelle Barrett and Ann Phillips, eds., Destabilizing Theory: Feminist Debate Stanford (Stanford: Press,1992).Foran Contemporary University and"the exampleof feministdebateoversuchtermsas "evidence," "experience," after the Linguistic Turn:Historicizing body,"see KathleenCanning,"History Discourse andExperience," 19, No. 2 (1994), 368-401. Signs, 21 likeotherdiscourses, of its hashadto becomeaware of the problem Feminism, historical with first-world "insupporting the complicity imperialism. Specifically, of modernity, feminists and fail to resistWestern therefore, agendas misrecognize hegemonies,"in InderpalGrewal and Caren Kaplan, eds., "Introduction: Transnational FeministPractices and Questionsof Postmodernity," in Scattered and Transnational FeministPractices Hegemonies: Postmodernity (Minneapolis: of Minnesota Press,1994),pp. 2-3. University 22 "TheImpossibility of Subaltern Views GyanPrakash, History," Nepantla: from in references will be citedparenthetically South,1, No. 2 (2000), 287.Subsequent the text. anothercounterclaim to historyby elevating 23Le Guin'stale also suggests "fable" to equivalent statuswith historical even while insisting narrative on the of fable, includingthe envelopingnarrative/fable "Sur." noncorroborationality When the members of the women's their redescribe expedition exploitsonly to theirchildrenand grandchildren-such as "howcousinJuanadranka cupof tea on the bottomof the worldundersevensuns"-as "fairy tales"(p. 272), standing Le Guin troubles the distinction betweenoriginhistory and originfables.History in thiscaseis the product a shadowy, of European whilefableoccupies less culture, statusassociated withcolonized cultures. distinguished 24The majorsource on Shackletonas hero and leaderof men is Roland Shackleton Huntsford, (New York: Atheneum, 1986). See also F A. Worseley, Boat Shackleton's (NewYork: Norton,1997),andof coursethe storyastold Journey himselfin South. by Shackleton The storyof Shackletonleadinghis men to survivefor two yearsin the subhas been takenup at severallevelsof popular Antarctic culture. The New regions York of Natural mounted an exhibitionof Shackletonia Museum in 1999; History The Endurance: Shackleton's George Butlerdirectedtwo 2001 documentaries: Antarctic and a shorterIMAXversion,Shackleton's Antarctic Legendary Expedition Adventure. Both films are unabashed of Shackletonthe manand hagiographies leader of men.The BBCproduced andbroadcast a mini-series, directed Shackleton, Charles the and noted in January actor KennethBranagh Sturridge starring by 2001. Rumoris that a Hollywood featurefilm on the expeditionand rescueis A business-oriented Shackleton's Morrell underway. Way,ed. Margot publication, and Stephanie Shackleton (London: 2001), proposes Capparell Nicholas-Brealey, as an exemplary of men fromwhomcontemporary business manager peoplehave muchto learn.All attestthatthe present is a momentof nostalgia andre-rememsuccesshas allowed bering of this disaster.Focuson Shackleton's managerial 120
in the raceto the pole has never forwhomScott'slossto Amundsen Anglophiles anotherBritishexplorer-who did not achievethe pole, but sat rightto promote at leastdid not die trying-aboveAmundsen.
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