"For terror of the deadness beyond": arctic environments and inhuman ecologies in Michelle Paver’s "Dark matter"

• Main Author: Merola, Nicole M.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Universidad de Alcalá 2014
• Subjects: Arctic; Ecophobia; Ghost story; Gothic; Resource extraction; Violence; Ártico; Ecofobia; Historia de fantasmas; Gótico; La extracción de recursos; La violencia; Literatura; Medio ambiente; Literature; Environmental science; Svalbard; Ballenas; Larga; Focas; walrus*
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10017/20860

In this essay I examine Michelle Paver’s 2010 novel "Dark Matter", a ghost story, for how her use of the gothic and horror contributes to undermining pastoral and romantic fantasies about the Arctic. Drawing on the history of whale, walrus, and seal hunting in Svalbard, the site of the novel’s 1937 scientific expedition, and my own experience there, I look at the tension Paver creates between the beauty of the Svalbard environment and its long history as a location for human violence against nonhuman animals. I suggest that, through the figure of the "gengånger", or “one who walks again,” and the built environment and relics in Svalbard, Paver works to transmit both the violence of harvesting marine mammals and the violence men perpetrate against each other in the name of resource extraction. In this essay I engage in dialogue with recent environmental humanities work on ecophobia, dark ecologies, and the ecocritical uses of fear, and argue for the consideration of the ghost story, a genre little studied by ecocritics. Through highlighting the novel’s focus on violence linked to extractive practices, I suggest, finally, that "Dark Matter" performs two important functions: it records past inhuman ecologies and it opens out onto a reading of contemporary Arctic geopolitics. Este ensayo analiza cómo el uso de narrativas góticas y de terror en la novela de Michelle Paver "Dark Matter" (La materia oscura, 2010), un cuento de fantasmas, debilita las fantasías bucólicas y románticas del Ártico. Recurriendo a la historia de la caza de ballenas, morsas y focas en Svalbard, el emplazamiento de la expedición científica de 1937 de la novela, así como mi propia experiencia allí, analizo la tensión creada por Paver entre la belleza del medio ambiente de Svalbard y su larga historia como lugar de violencia humana contra animales no-humano. Sugiero que, a través de la figura del "gengänger", o “el que anda otra vez,” las reliquias y el medio ambiente construido de Svalbard, Paver intenta transmitir tanto la violencia de la ...