Africa, Antarctica and the Arts

Abstract

South Africa and Africa have been marginalised in the history of Antarctica. We have a regional responsibility to serve as a springboard for wider African interests in the high latitudes, but run the risk of not fully maximising the benefits of our geographic advantage. This is due not only to a lack of adequate human capital, but also to an inability to tell the story of African-Antarctic interrelationship in ways that speak to both local interests and international concerns. The synthetic capacities of the arts and humanities are able to stimulate systems scale integration of knowledge and understanding, as well as develop advanced skills in cultural analysis, science communication, and representing complex histories and futures.

This is particularly important now because, in addition to paleontological and geophysical links, Antarctica has increasing interrelationship with Africa’s climactic future. Africa is widely predicted to be the continent worst affected by climate change, and Antarctica and its surrounding Southern Ocean are uniquely implicated as crucial mediators for changing global climate and currents, rainfall patterns, and sea level rise. In the context of a global rise in research on postcolonial Antarctica and the Antarctic humanities, this research aims to bridge the Antarctica–(South) Africa divide. This aim will be pursued by exploring the wealth of South African visual, artistic and literary material through which Antarctica has been represented and imagined and by bringing the decolonial and postcolonial frameworks of analysis to the southern continent.