From Death in the Ice to life in the museum: Absence, affect and mystery in the Arctic
Ever since its disappearance in the mid-19th-century, the fate of the ‘Franklin expedition’ has attracted interest and intrigue. The story has been told and re-told but remained one of ‘mystery’ into the early 21st-century. When the expedition’s two ships were finally located, the narrative shifted...
Published in: | Environment and Planning D: Society and Space |
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crsagepubl:10.1177/0263775820953859 2024-05-12T08:00:13+00:00 From Death in the Ice to life in the museum: Absence, affect and mystery in the Arctic Medby, Ingrid A Dittmer, Jason 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0263775820953859 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0263775820953859 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/0263775820953859 en eng SAGE Publications https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space volume 39, issue 1, page 176-193 ISSN 0263-7758 1472-3433 Environmental Science (miscellaneous) Geography, Planning and Development journal-article 2020 crsagepubl https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775820953859 2024-04-18T08:34:06Z Ever since its disappearance in the mid-19th-century, the fate of the ‘Franklin expedition’ has attracted interest and intrigue. The story has been told and re-told but remained one of ‘mystery’ into the early 21st-century. When the expedition’s two ships were finally located, the narrative shifted with the reappearance of long-absent objects and materials – in turn, posing challenges for museum curators seeking to re-present the story. In this article, we conduct a side-by-side examination of two sites: the 1845 Franklin expedition in the Northwest Passage and the 2017 Death in the Ice exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, UK. We juxtapose these to consider the forces unleashed by the ships’ absence and their presence-ing first in Victorian times and then in the UK museum space today. By analysing the sites through the concept of ‘absent presence’, the agency of both the material and the immaterial is powerfully highlighted. Via an emphasis on the relation of the absent presence to the sensing bodies of others, we consider the concept as simultaneous and co-constitutive. That is, absence and presence ought to be understood not as objective states, but as becoming-absent and becoming-present: processes that are dependent on curated and embodied sensibilities. Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic Northwest passage SAGE Publications Arctic Northwest Passage Greenwich Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 39 1 176 193 |
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SAGE Publications |
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crsagepubl |
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English |
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Environmental Science (miscellaneous) Geography, Planning and Development |
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Environmental Science (miscellaneous) Geography, Planning and Development Medby, Ingrid A Dittmer, Jason From Death in the Ice to life in the museum: Absence, affect and mystery in the Arctic |
topic_facet |
Environmental Science (miscellaneous) Geography, Planning and Development |
description |
Ever since its disappearance in the mid-19th-century, the fate of the ‘Franklin expedition’ has attracted interest and intrigue. The story has been told and re-told but remained one of ‘mystery’ into the early 21st-century. When the expedition’s two ships were finally located, the narrative shifted with the reappearance of long-absent objects and materials – in turn, posing challenges for museum curators seeking to re-present the story. In this article, we conduct a side-by-side examination of two sites: the 1845 Franklin expedition in the Northwest Passage and the 2017 Death in the Ice exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, UK. We juxtapose these to consider the forces unleashed by the ships’ absence and their presence-ing first in Victorian times and then in the UK museum space today. By analysing the sites through the concept of ‘absent presence’, the agency of both the material and the immaterial is powerfully highlighted. Via an emphasis on the relation of the absent presence to the sensing bodies of others, we consider the concept as simultaneous and co-constitutive. That is, absence and presence ought to be understood not as objective states, but as becoming-absent and becoming-present: processes that are dependent on curated and embodied sensibilities. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Medby, Ingrid A Dittmer, Jason |
author_facet |
Medby, Ingrid A Dittmer, Jason |
author_sort |
Medby, Ingrid A |
title |
From Death in the Ice to life in the museum: Absence, affect and mystery in the Arctic |
title_short |
From Death in the Ice to life in the museum: Absence, affect and mystery in the Arctic |
title_full |
From Death in the Ice to life in the museum: Absence, affect and mystery in the Arctic |
title_fullStr |
From Death in the Ice to life in the museum: Absence, affect and mystery in the Arctic |
title_full_unstemmed |
From Death in the Ice to life in the museum: Absence, affect and mystery in the Arctic |
title_sort |
from death in the ice to life in the museum: absence, affect and mystery in the arctic |
publisher |
SAGE Publications |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0263775820953859 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0263775820953859 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/0263775820953859 |
geographic |
Arctic Northwest Passage Greenwich |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Northwest Passage Greenwich |
genre |
Arctic Northwest passage |
genre_facet |
Arctic Northwest passage |
op_source |
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space volume 39, issue 1, page 176-193 ISSN 0263-7758 1472-3433 |
op_rights |
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775820953859 |
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Environment and Planning D: Society and Space |
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39 |
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1 |
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176 |
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193 |
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