"The only almost germ-free continent left" : pandemics and purity in cultural perceptions of Antarctica

• Published in: Environmental Humanities
• Main Authors: Leane, Elizabeth, Lavery, Charne, Nash, Meredith
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Duke University Press 2023
• Subjects: Antarctica; Virus; Pandemic; Purity; COVID-19 pandemic; Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19); SDG-03: Good health and well-being; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*; SCAR; Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2263/96258; https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-10216184

This article examines the role of pandemics and viruses in cultural perceptions of Antarctica over the past century. In the popular imagination, Antarctica has often been framed as a place of purity, refuge, and isolation. In a series of fiction and screen texts from the nineteenth century to the present, viruses feature prominently. The texts fall into two categories: narratives in which Antarctica is the sole source of safety in a pandemic-ravaged world and those in which a virus (or another form of contagion) is discovered within the continent itself and needs to be contained. Viruses in these texts are not only literal but also metaphorical, taking the form of any kind of threatening infection, and as such are linked to texts in which Antarctic purity is discursively connected to racial and gendered exclusivity. Based on this comparison, the article argues that ideas of containment and contagion can have political connotations in an Antarctic context, to the extent that they are applied to particular groups of people in order to position them as “alien” to the Antarctic environment. The authors show that the recent media construction of Antarctica during COVID-19 needs to be understood against this disturbing aspect of the Antarctic imaginary, and also that narratives of Antarctic purity are imaginatively linked to both geopolitical exclusions and the melting of Antarctic ice. A research program supported by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) on the implications of COVID-19 on Antarctica, and financial support by SCAR; partly financially supported by the South African National Research Foundation’s National Antarctic Programme (SANAP). http://environmentalhumanities.dukejournals.org/ am2024 English SDG-03:Good heatlh and well-being