Cryonarratives for Warming Times: Icebergs as Planetary Travellers
In the Anthropocene, icebergs have moved from the periphery to the centre of global public consciousness, their ephemerality and mutability ominously signalling the mobile and impermanent nature of the polar regions. With ice sheets and ice shelves increasingly unstable as ocean temperatures rise, h...
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ftunivtasecite:oai:ecite.utas.edu.au:152203 2023-05-15T16:41:59+02:00 Cryonarratives for Warming Times: Icebergs as Planetary Travellers Leane, E 2022 application/pdf http://ecite.utas.edu.au/152203 en eng Manchester University Press http://ecite.utas.edu.au/152203/2/152203 - Cryonarratives for warming times.pdf Leane, E, Cryonarratives for Warming Times: Icebergs as Planetary Travellers, Ice Humanities: Living, Working, and Thinking in a Melting World, Manchester University Press, K Dodds and S Sorlin (ed), United Kingdom, pp. 250-265. ISBN 9781526157775 (2022) [Research Book Chapter] 9781526157775 http://ecite.utas.edu.au/152203 Language Communication and Culture Literary studies Ecocriticism Research Book Chapter NonPeerReviewed 2022 ftunivtasecite 2023-03-13T23:17:23Z In the Anthropocene, icebergs have moved from the periphery to the centre of global public consciousness, their ephemerality and mutability ominously signalling the mobile and impermanent nature of the polar regions. With ice sheets and ice shelves increasingly unstable as ocean temperatures rise, humans feel implicated for the first time in the creation of these objects. The calving of a huge tabular berg is now a political event, framed by media headlines worldwide not simply as a visual spectacle but also as a source of communal guilt, fear, anxiety and anger. Yet such icebergs can endure for decades beyond this sensationalised moment, wandering peripatetically through the oceans and interacting with human and nonhuman actors in diverse and unpredictable ways. This chapter proposes a new term, 'cryonarrative,' as a shorthand for the kinds of stories that humans are telling about ice in the contemporary period, and looks at the particular cryonarratives being applied to icebergs. Within media and tourist discourse, icebergs are often subject to reductive narratives that render them as symbols of human doom or aesthetic objects for human consumption. As a remedy to this anthropocentric approach, I argue for the advantages of characterising and narrating icebergs as travellers on a planetary scale. Book Part Ice Shelves eCite UTAS (University of Tasmania) |
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English |
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Language Communication and Culture Literary studies Ecocriticism |
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Language Communication and Culture Literary studies Ecocriticism Leane, E Cryonarratives for Warming Times: Icebergs as Planetary Travellers |
topic_facet |
Language Communication and Culture Literary studies Ecocriticism |
description |
In the Anthropocene, icebergs have moved from the periphery to the centre of global public consciousness, their ephemerality and mutability ominously signalling the mobile and impermanent nature of the polar regions. With ice sheets and ice shelves increasingly unstable as ocean temperatures rise, humans feel implicated for the first time in the creation of these objects. The calving of a huge tabular berg is now a political event, framed by media headlines worldwide not simply as a visual spectacle but also as a source of communal guilt, fear, anxiety and anger. Yet such icebergs can endure for decades beyond this sensationalised moment, wandering peripatetically through the oceans and interacting with human and nonhuman actors in diverse and unpredictable ways. This chapter proposes a new term, 'cryonarrative,' as a shorthand for the kinds of stories that humans are telling about ice in the contemporary period, and looks at the particular cryonarratives being applied to icebergs. Within media and tourist discourse, icebergs are often subject to reductive narratives that render them as symbols of human doom or aesthetic objects for human consumption. As a remedy to this anthropocentric approach, I argue for the advantages of characterising and narrating icebergs as travellers on a planetary scale. |
format |
Book Part |
author |
Leane, E |
author_facet |
Leane, E |
author_sort |
Leane, E |
title |
Cryonarratives for Warming Times: Icebergs as Planetary Travellers |
title_short |
Cryonarratives for Warming Times: Icebergs as Planetary Travellers |
title_full |
Cryonarratives for Warming Times: Icebergs as Planetary Travellers |
title_fullStr |
Cryonarratives for Warming Times: Icebergs as Planetary Travellers |
title_full_unstemmed |
Cryonarratives for Warming Times: Icebergs as Planetary Travellers |
title_sort |
cryonarratives for warming times: icebergs as planetary travellers |
publisher |
Manchester University Press |
publishDate |
2022 |
url |
http://ecite.utas.edu.au/152203 |
genre |
Ice Shelves |
genre_facet |
Ice Shelves |
op_relation |
http://ecite.utas.edu.au/152203/2/152203 - Cryonarratives for warming times.pdf Leane, E, Cryonarratives for Warming Times: Icebergs as Planetary Travellers, Ice Humanities: Living, Working, and Thinking in a Melting World, Manchester University Press, K Dodds and S Sorlin (ed), United Kingdom, pp. 250-265. ISBN 9781526157775 (2022) [Research Book Chapter] 9781526157775 http://ecite.utas.edu.au/152203 |
_version_ |
1766032453984583680 |