Desire, Incomprehensibility, and Despair in the Antarctic Vision of Werner Herzog // Deseo, incomprensibilidad y desesperación en la visión antártica de Werner Herzog

• Published in: Ecozon@. European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment
• Main Author: Barber, Jacob
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Universidad de Alcalá 2015
• Subjects: Werner Herzog; Antarctica; climate change; myth; despair; history; Antártida; cambio climático; mito; desesperanza; historia; Antarctic; Consecuencia; Deseo; Desesperación; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Antártica
• Online Access: https://ecozona.eu/article/view/671

Werner Herzog’s 2007 documentary Encounters at the End of the World concerns human ideals of exploration in the extreme environment of the Antarctic. Throughout the film, Herzog and his characters enrol the Antarctic variously as a site of desire and as a site of incomprehensibility in self-told narratives about their own lives. Their ability to do so is a consequence of both popular myth that casts the Antarctic as a static and empty wasteland, and nationalistic modes of governance that promote science but squeeze other modes of knowing to the fringe. The characters in Herzog’s film are thus doomed to a cycle of endless repetition: forced by myth to constantly revisit the moment of discovery, and constrained by modes of governance that deny formal expression of the heightened sensibility they experience when engaging with Antarctic space. Ultimately, this cycle generates despair and so the film bears witness to an inversion of frontier tropes: Instead of heroic white male coming to the aid of nature in distress we instead find the heroic white male in distress staring into an utterly hopeless void. In this way, Herzog’s film becomes a parable about history constraining new forms of knowing. In an age of increasing environmental uncertainty, and with the Antarctic enrolled as both a litmus test for human impacts on the planet, and for gauging the future of the human race, Encounters asks us to reject history where history teaches us nothing new, and it asks us to find ways to renew the great experiment of living in the world.Resumen El documental Encounters at the End of the World (2007) de Werner Herzog reflexiona sobre los ideales humanos de exploración en el medioambiente extremo de la Antártida. A lo largo de la película, Herzog y sus personajes dan un rol a la Antártida como lugar de deseo y como lugar incomprensible en las narrativas que los personajes cuentan ellos mismos sobre sus propias vidas. Su habilidad para hacer esto es consecuencia del mito popular que muestra la Antártida como un páramo estático ...