RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article
T1 "For terror of the deadness beyond": arctic environments and inhuman ecologies in Michelle Paver’s "Dark matter"
A1 Merola, Nicole M.
K1 Arctic
K1 Ecophobia
K1 Ghost story
K1 Gothic
K1 Resource extraction
K1 Violence
K1 Ártico
K1 Ecofobia
K1 Historia de fantasmas
K1 Gótico
K1 La extracción de recursos
K1 La violencia
K1 Literatura
K1 Literature
K1 Medio ambiente
K1 Environmental science
AB 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.
PB Universidad de Alcalá
SN 2171-9594
YR 2014
FD 2014-10
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10017/20860
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10017/20860
LA eng
DS MINDS@UW
RD 23-abr-2024