Some Reflections on the Emergence of Antarctic Humanities

Abstract

The aim in this concluding chapter is to trace a few strands in the emergence of Antarctic humanities as a field. It starts with brief remarks on the scope of the humanities more generally, where after it turns to the IGY and subsequent “external” impulses that slowly contributed new institutional conditions and activities from the mid-1980s onward. In the long run, such developments proved conducive to a consolidation of Antarctic humanities during the fourth IPY and the declaration of a “cultural turn in Antarctic studies” by 2010. Finally, more specific reflections in this concluding chapter concern a proliferation of topics and intellectual trends we find today, ranging from the traditional to the critical. In a final section, some of these topics and themes are summarized, concluding with an attempt to peer into the future.