What Is the Imagined North?

• Main Author: Chartier, Daniel
• Other Authors: Université du Québec à Montréal = University of Québec in Montréal (UQAM), Laboratoire international d'étude multidisciplinaire comparée des représentations du Nord, Arctic Arts Summit, Daniel Chartier
• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2018
• Subjects: Literature; Decolonial theory; Research ethics; Winter; Aboriginal; Nordicity; Discursive analysis; Inuit; Scandinavia; Arctic; Canada; Nunavik; Images of the North; Québec; Alaska; Greenland; Siberia; Russia; North; Cultural representations; Colonialism; Culture; Far North; [SHS.LITT]Humanities and Social Sciences/Literature; [SHS.SCIPO]Humanities and Social Sciences/Political science; [SHS.SOCIO]Humanities and Social Sciences/Sociology; [SHS.MUSEO]Humanities and Social Sciences/Cultural heritage and museology; [SHS.HIST]Humanities and Social Sciences/History; [SHS.GEO]Humanities and Social Sciences/Geography; [SHS.GENRE]Humanities and Social Sciences/Gender studies; [SHS.ANTHRO-SE]Humanities and Social Sciences/Social Anthropology and ethnology; [SHS.ENVIR]Humanities and Social Sciences/Environmental studies; [SHS.HISPHILSO]Humanities and Social Sciences/History; Philosophy and Sociology of Sciences; North Pole; inuit; sami
• Online Access: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01858102; https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01858102/document; https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01858102/file/222058500.pdf

International audience The North has been imagined and represented for centuries by artists and writers of the Western world, which has led, over time and the accumulation of successive layers of discourse, to the creation of an “imagined North” – ranging from the “North” of Scandinavia, Greenland, Russia, to the “Far North” or the poles. Westerners have reached the North Pole only a century go, which makes the “North” the product of a double perspective: an outside one – made especially of Western images – and an inside one – that of Northern cultures (Inuit, Sami, Cree, etc.). The first are often simplified and the second, ignored. If we wish to understand what the “North” is in an overall perspective, we must ask ourselves two questions: how do images define the North, and which ethical principles should govern how we consider Northern cultures in order to have a complete view (including, in particular, those that have been undervalued by the South)? In this article, I try to address these two questions, first by defining what is the imagined North and then by proposing an inclusive program to “recomplexify” the cultural Arctic.