Antarctic diaries and heroic reputations

Changing the subject

Elizabeth Leane

pp. 27-51

in: Roberts Peder, Lize-Marié van der Watt, Adrián Howkins (eds), Antarctica and the humanities, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Abstract

This chapter investigates what the study of diaries can tell us about human relationships with Antarctica, and conversely, what Antarctic examples can tell us about the genre of the diary. Not only are Antarctic diaries important sources for polar historians and fetishized material objects, they are also a means through which human visitors fashion identities in relation to the continent. Diaries reveal the both the pleasure and pressures of Antarctic inhabitation, such as the tension between a self-conscious sense of an intrepid adventure and the tedium of daily life. After generally discussing diaries' contributions to the construction of an "Antarctic" subjectivity, the chapter focuses on the example of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (1911–1914), examining the role of diaries in the making and unmaking of heroic reputations.