Journal articles on the topic 'Ecocritical discourse analysis'

This article argues that Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of becoming-animal is aesthetically as well as structurally related to the discourse of the sublime. It investigates the species politics of both concepts and illustrates their ecocritical potential with an analysis of William Blake’s Lyca poems, “The Little Girl Lost” and “The Little Girl Found,” both published in his Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794).

This article is an overview of how language communicates and construes humanity’s relationship to the environment in different cultural contexts. With reference to Moth Smoke (2012), Trespassing (2005), White Noise (1999) and A Thousand Acres (1991) the study explores particularities of American and Pakistani environmental discourse. Informed by interdisciplinary approaches like ecocriticism and toxic discourse the analysis seeks to demonstrate writers’ engagement with issues and concerns on environmental degradation. The purpose of the study is to explore the plurality of perspectives that are required to address the environmental contamination taking place globally. To understand the fundamental premise of how different cultures view and frame ecological crisis especially in the form of toxicity, pollution and contamination, this article briefly examines the selected Pakistani and American writers’ representation of their society’s ecological relationship with the living and non-living world recognising the complex altering relationship between the environment and the social sphere.

In an age where digital, virtual and augmented reality discourses are on an upsurge, the need to call for an environmental discourse is of paramount importance. Environmental literature or Eco literature stresses on the establishment of a strong bond between human and his or her immediate environment. A scrutiny of the works by eminent poets both East and West discloses the changing contours of nature. The changing landscapes, the extinction of flora and fauna, the diminishing relationship between humans and nonhumans are vividly and exquisitely rendered better by exuberant poets than any other creators. As a theoretical approach, ecocriticism grew out of the traditional approach in literature that addresses how humans relate to the nonhuman world or the environment in literature. In order to highlight the ecological transformation that has taken place from the past to the present, from the rural to the urban and from the local to global the present study has taken for analysis the select poems of the distinguished Indian poet Nissim Ezekiel and the renowned British poet Stephen Spender. Further, the select poems of Nissim Ezekiel and Stephen Spender are examined from an ecocritical lens.

This research analyzes how nature, human and non-human, have been represented in Guy de Maupassant’s short story The Horla through an ecocritical lens. In its fundamental form, the ecocritical theoretical framework investigates how nature, landscape, and places have been represented in a literary text and explore how human and non-human interrelations have been portrayed. In this story, Maupassant has portrayed nature as a positive, healing force and delved into the anthropocentric and anthropomorphic constructivist attitude to non-human, invisible, emergent being, in this context, the Horla. The narrator’s anthropocentric world view has denied justice toward Horla to exist, fearing he will shake the human-centred ecological hierarchy. According to the Deep Ecological philosophical position or ecosophy, all things, including spiritual being that cannot be seen, are interconnected and have their necessary position in various modalities of Nature. Denial of the existence of a new emerging entity and the inability to schematize and adopt it will destroy the new being and the human race itself. The paper has deployed two major research methods; textual analysis and archival method. Apart from these two methods, discourse analysis method has also been used where deemed relevant and necessary. The paper finds that The Horla is not merely a generic horror story that has portrayed the inner psychological state of the narrator in a fantastique manner but also an expository one of human frailties and human denial of a being that deemed more intelligent and perfect than the human being, fearing to lose the anthropocentric dominance.

This article explores the relationship between Native American lands/environment and the women from ecocritical /ecofeminist perspectives. It has been postulated that while the Euro- American accounts of the history, culture, indigenous women and their relation with nature/land project stereotypical, negative images, Louise Erdrich, through the employment of hybrid narrative techniques combining Eurocentric and Native American modes of narration, has reconfigured the Native American women's environmental identity/subjectivity. This study conducts discourse analysis of the two richly thematic environmental narratives of Louise Erdrich to establish the interconnectivity between women and lands within the realm of ecofeminism. The primary texts explored include Tracks and Love Medicine. The study's contribution is it's highlighting the significance of the Native American Ecofeminist narratives that consider environmental issues to be human issues and thus positively affect the human attitude towards nature.

This article explores the workings of second-person pronoun forms in Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 post-apocalyptic novel The Road. More particularly, the analysis focuses on examples of ‘doubly deictic you’ (Herman, 2002), and demonstrates how the novel exploits the uncertain deictic, referential and address functions of this particular pronoun form to develop what I term a ‘post-apocalyptic poetics’, through which it attempts to explore – and enact – the spatial and temporal dislocations that ensue from the fictional apocalypse. The article also demonstrates how the novel’s indeterminate use of narrative you creates profound hermeneutical (and often ontological) uncertainty for readers, who must often suspend any attempt to fix the positions from and to which the story is addressed. McCarthy’s opaque use of the terms you and your throughout the novel creates profound polyphony and multivalence by preventing readers from clearly distinguishing the discourse and perspectives of protagonists from those of the narration, and by thus impelling readers to develop several interpretations of key passages, all of which must be sustained simultaneously. Finally, the analysis explores how the (potential) apostrophic effects associated with doubly deictic you serve to immerse readers in the horrors of the post-apocalyptic world, thus increasing the novel’s ecocritical import.

Environmental issues have become a topic of discussion in the last few decades. Kuntowijoyo, a well-known novelist in Indonesia, also pays serious attention to the environmental issues through his literary works. This study uses a critical discourse analysis method with an ecocritical approach to reveal and explain the forms of ecological awareness reconstruction which are contained in Kuntowijoyo's novel Mantra Pejinak Ular. The results are as follows. Reconstructions are carried out from a perspective, a way of behaving, a mode of transportation, a model of recreation, and an investment model towards the environment. (1) The reconstruction of the perspective is carried out by rebuilding human consciousness to build harmony with nature. (2) The reconstruction of how to behave is carried out by prioritizing actions to preserve nature. (3) The reconstruction of transportation mode is carried out by warding off the bad social stigma of natural transportation modes. (4) The reconstruction of the recreation model is carried out by enjoying the beauty of animals without cutting them off from their original habitat. (5) The reconstruction of the investment model is carried out by applying an investment model with an ecological perspective that prioritizes environmental sustainability as a legacy for future generations.

Natural problems are the main issues which is related to the human attitudes and behaviours. There is a reciprocal relationship between human and nature. Ecological damage affects the life of organisms or other biotic and abiotic elements. In literary discourse, the author could show the destruction of nature. The purpose of this study is to describe the natural problems in Okky Madasari's novel Mata dan Manusia Laut. This study used a qualitative method with a descriptive analytic working mechanism. The approach used was an ecocritical approach. The data collection technique applied was documentation. The data analysis activities consisted of data reduction, data presentation, and drawing conclusions/verification. The results showed that the natural problems contained in the novel of Mata and Manusia Laut were natural problems and artificial or influenced by human behaviour. Non-anthropocentric problems were weather problems in Kaledupa and Masalembo, high waves caused by the gravity of the moon, tsunamis, and earthquakes. Meanwhile, the problems that were directly influenced by the attitudes and behaviours of the characters consisted of the problem of fish bombs, sea water pollution with garbage, and the death of the mother octopus. The results of this study could be used to strengthen the character and attitude of loving the environment.

AbstractThe analysis presented here focuses on the way the antithesis between the global and the local is approached from a literary point of view in the contemporary Indian context. Assuming an ecocritical perspective, it reinterprets literature on ecological themes as a tool to negotiate some spaces of autonomy from hegemonic models imposed by globalization on an economic, technological and cultural level. Global plans often collide with local ecosystems, upsetting their pre-existent equilibrium and always more frequently producing antagonism, resistance and overt conflicts. The claim for the management of local resources and the safeguard of traditional lore become a response to the “allegedly value-neutral global market” (Eaton / Lorentzen (eds.) (2003): Ecofeminism and Globalization: Exploring Culture, Context, and Religion. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., 4). Filtering the discussion through an ecofeminist critique, it is possible to find a connection between the abuse of power that underlies human oppression and the exploitation of the environment. Women and nature are, in fact, connected in the dominant masculine discourse by the rhetoric of submission, which is harmful to both of them (Zimmerman, et al. (ed.) (1993): Environmental Philosophy: from Animal Rights to Radical Ecology. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.; Warren / Cheney. (1991): “Ecological Feminism and Ecosystem Ecology”. Hypatia 6/1 Ecological Feminism: 179–197.). As an example of resistance strategy to these dynamics and a means to give voice to women through literature, this article proposes a critical reading of the novel Betvā bahtī rahī by Maitreyī Puṣpā (“The Betvā River was flowing”).

Ecocriticism has been at the forefront of introducing risk theory and risk research to literary and cultural studies. The essay surveys this more recent trend in ecocritical scholarship, which began with the new millennium and has focused on the participation of fictional texts in various environmental risk discourses. The study of risk fiction draws our attention to cultural moments of uncertainty, threat, and instability, to risk scenarios both local and planetary—not least the risk scenarios of the Anthropocene in which species consciousness and ‘planetariness’ have become central issues. The essay reviews how key publications have shed light on the cultural and literary historical relevance of environmental risk and on various issues that are central to ecocriticism. It points out how they have sharpened our sense of both the spatial and temporal dimensions of environmental risk and environmental crisis, introduced new categories of ecocritical analysis, contributed to clarifying some of the field’s major conceptual premises, and added a new approach to genre discussions, in particular relating to fiction engaging with global anthropogenic climate change.

This essay presents an ecocritical analysis of Hannah Crafts's The Bondwoman's Narrative, the 1850s manuscript novel by a formerly-enslaved African American woman that was recovered by Henry Louis Gates in 2001. Examining Crafts's extensive engagement with Charles Dickens's Bleak House, it argues that Crafts's fictionalized narrative of enslavement and self-emancipation re-imagines a Victorian politics of environmental health as a critique of environmental racism. Showing how Crafts presents the material ecology of the plantation South as a site and vector of violence, it reads The Bondwoman's Narrative as resisting nineteenth-century scientific discourses of racialized immunity that sought to legitimize the systemic neglect of enslaved people in the antebellum United States.

To carry out the worldwide environmental protection, ecocritics try to popularize the campaign by examining how current environmental issues are represented in literary works. With ecocirticism as the theoretical support, this paper is to interpret Ernest Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa, analyze the relationship between characters and nature, and reveal his attitude towards the natural world, by applying the combination of discourse analysis and documentary analysis. While hunting, Hemingway shows concern for environmental degradation, sticks to the hunting principle all the time, and is good at turning trash to treasure. It is not hard to conclude that Ernest Hemingway has developed the awareness of sustainable development. As a distinguished writer, Hemingway is of great importance to modern sustainable development in advocating, popularizing, and fulfilling this concept.

Abstract In 2011, amid a string of controversies in the Taiwanese countryside surrounding industrial pollution, urban expansion, the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources, and the destruction of the natural and rural environments, poet and editor Hong Hong announced ‘the last pastoral poem’, suggesting that the representation of the countryside as bucolic landscape was an out-of-date and politically impotent trope. This paper argues, contrary to Hong Hong’s polemic, that depictions of pastoral utopia remain a vital and powerful alternative to the forces of urbanisation and industrialisation in Taiwan and the larger Sinophone world. The paper analyses poetry by contemporary poet Ling Yu against the background of the tradition of utopian pastoral writing represented by the book of Genesis, Virgil, Laozi, Tao Yuanming, and Gary Snyder. The paper argues for a poetics that symbolically mediates between nature and culture, and building and dwelling, by means of slow ‘cultivation’, in both the agricultural and aesthetic senses. The paper further draws on transnational Hong Kong poet Liu Wai Tong’s concept of ‘you-topia’ to suggest a means of reconciling Chinese tradition and contemporary ecocritical discourse.

In this paper I discuss videogames as a form of cultural ecology using the examples of Flower (2013) and Shadow of the Colossus (2011). I outline the five basic hypotheses of Farca’s Emancipated Player (2016) as a dialectic meaning-production between player and implied player and connect it to Zapf’s notions about, literature as a cultural ecology and his triadic model of regenerative discourses. Addressing similarities in function and differences in the mediality of literature and videogames and considering recent studies in game-theory and ecocriticsm, I will demonstrate that emancipated play of aesthetically complex videogames can be considered a condition for videogames to work as a form of cultural ecology and thus also serve the function of regenerative force in a cultural context. The following analyses consider especially the use of unnatural anti-conventions as a self-reflexive technique for reflection about videogames themselves, but also trigger reflections about the empirical reality. The games offer perspectives creating blanks for the player to be filled with her imagination and consequently unfold arguments about the aesthetic condition and conventions of videogames as a mirror of an especially capitalist society without regard for the environment or the non-human. It becomes clear, that representation or procedural rhetoric alone cannot be sufficient to describe the aesthetic effect of the videogame as a Gesamtkunstwerk. They can only function as cultural ecology, if we consider them as multimedia artworks offering a degree of openness for the imaginative power of the player. To play videogames is not either to observe or to inhabit, it is the amalgamation of both which enables their creative force to influence the discourse as cultural ecology. Resumen Este artículo trata los videojuegos como una forma de ecología cultural, usando los ejemplos Flower (2013) y Shadow of the Colossus (2011). Para apoyar esta tesis, hago uso del "Emancipated Player" (jugador emancipado) de Farca, un tipo de jugador receptivo de las artes figurativas y como forma de produccion dialéctica del significado entre un jugador real de este tipo y el jugador implícito (el diseño del juego). Conectaré esta teoria con el concepto de Zapf sobre la literatura como ecología cultural. Abordando las semejanzas en la función y las diferencias en la medialidad de la literatura y los videojuegos, y considerando los estudios recientes sobre teoría de juego y ecocrítica, demostraré que el juego emancipado de videojuegos estéticamente complicados puede ser considerado como condición para que los videojuegos funcionen como una forma de ecología cultural y, por lo tanto, como una fuerza regenerativa en un gran contexto cultural como la literatura. Los análisis ejemplares consideran especialmente la aplicación de anti-convenciones poco naturales como técnica auto-reflexiva para reflexionar sobre los videojuegos, que están relacionados con la realidad empirica. Los juegos ofrecen perspectivas creando espacios en blanco para que el jugador los llene con su propia imaginación, creando así argumento sobre la condición estética y las convenciones de los videojuegos como espejo de la sociedad neoliberal sin consideración del medio ambiente ni del no-humano. Se comprobará que la representación ni la retórica procedural pueden por sí solar ser suficiente para describir el efecto estético del videojuego como una Gesamtkunstwerk (una forma artística universal). Solamente funcionarán como ecología cultural si los consideramos formas de arte multimedia que ofrezcan un grado de apertura para la fuerza imaginativa del jugador. Jugar videojuegos no es ni observar ni habitar, sino una amalgama de ambos que permita que su fuerza creativa influya en el discurso como ecología cultural.

Ecocriticism, a study of literature in relation to the environment has become one of the tools post-colonial writers use in addressing environmental concerns. The environment is seen as a character acting along with humans in literary texts. A violation of nature therefore affects all the characters. The urgency for examining literature from an ecological angle is therefore justified. Anchored on ecocriticism, this paper adopts a qualitative method analysis to argue that corruption, coups d’état and the activities of terrorists create a hostile environment that needs serious discourse engagement. This paper discusses the environmental issues raised in Habila’s The Chibok Girls: The Boko Haram Kidnappings and Islamist Militancy in Nigeria. The study concludes that the Nigerian environment, and by extension the African one, is at the brink of destruction because there is a causal relationship between corruption, coups d’état, terrorism and ecophobia. The first one breeds the others.

The short story scene of award winners in Zambia is dominated by female writers. Chicken, by Efemia Chela, was nominated for the Caine Prize for African writing in 2014. A Hand to Hold, by Mali Kambandu, won the 2018 Kalemba Prize, a local award for Zambian writers. The Sack, by Namwali Serpell, won the Caine Prize in 2015 and Madam’s Sister, by Mbozi Haimbe, was the African regional winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2019. Studies between literature and the physical environment have become an area of interest for many writers. Following the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005 – 2014) and Agenda 2030, this study examines the representations of nature and ecocritical issues in the works of four award winning Zambian short story writers. Using the model by Glotfelty (1996), the examination addresses two issues (1) how nature is represented in four award winning short stories (2) the ecocritical issues raised in the short stories. Through a qualitative, textual analysis of the short stories, the findings highlight contributions that literature by Zambian writers can make towards the discourse on sustainability issues and raise awareness about nature and environmental concerns of the 21st century. 
 
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This in-depth analysis of the aesthetics of place and person in ‘Toba Tek Singh’, a famous short story by Saadat Hassan Manto, and a masterpiece of South Asian literature in English, presents a re-reading in the light of ecotheoretical concepts of ‘place’. It theorises how material space as ‘place’ is represented in literature and brings to light the hegemony of sociocultural discourses in relation to space, belittling its connection to nature. Ecotheory raises concerns of human and non-human life within the natural ecosystem of specific indigenous places. The protagonist of the story, Bishan Singh, ultimately also the namesake of a place, Toba Tek Singh, dies a terrible death while desperately searching for his native place. The article presents the story as a powerful literary attempt to re-imagine the places and spaces where we live and our relations to them.

Located at the gradually emerging juncture between the current discourses on the global and art in ecocritical scholarship, this article explores how contemporary works of art such as EARTH Sticker (2005) by the North American artist Philip Krohn and artist residency and exhibition projects such as Human/Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet (2008) parse, represent, and imagine the political, socioeconomic, cultural, and especially ecological implications of globalization. EARTH Sticker and two contributions to Human/Nature, the sculptures Sapukay: Cry for Help and Teko Mbarate: Struggle for Life by the Portuguese artist and current San Francisco Bay Area resident Rigo 23, present different environmental imaginaries that challenge and simultaneously rely on the material contexts and conditions on which the increasingly globalized production of art is always predicated. As Krohn and Rigo 23 demonstrate, even art that is created in an environmentalist context (Human/Nature) or with an ostensible activist purpose (EARTH Sticker) cannot escape this double bind. To identify this dilemma is not to dismiss these works of art as self-contradictory failures, but to highlight precisely Krohn’s and Rigo 23’s important insights with regard to this embedment for other global environmental imaginaries and particularly for further ecocritical analysis. Emphasizing the material and institutional conditions, current means and sites of cultural production, and technologies for the dissemination of information, these works of art thus foreground and perform what is often erased from the equation and from critical analysis.ResumenSituado en la poco a poco emergente coyuntura entre los discursos sobre lo global y sobre el arte en la ecocrítica, este artículo examina cómo trabajos de arte contemporáneo como EARTH Sticker (2005), del artista norteamericano Philip Krohn, y residencias de artistas y proyectos de exposiciones como Human/Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet (2008) analizan, representan e imaginan las implicaciones políticas, socieconómicas, culturales y especialmente las ecológicas, de la globalización. EARTH Sticker y dos contribuciones a Human/Nature, las esculturas Sapukay: Cry for Help y Teko Mbarate: Struggle for Life del artista portugués Rigo 23, actual residente del área de la bahía de San Francisco, presentan diferentes imaginarios medioambientales que desafían y al mismo tiempo dependen de los contextos y las condiciones materiales en las que se fundamenta la producción de arte, cada vez más globalizada. Como Krohn y Rigo 23 demuestran, incluso el arte creado en un contexto medioambiental (Human/Nature) o con un propósito aparentemente activista (EARTH Sticker) no puede escapar esta coyuntura. Identificar este dilema no es desestimar estas obras de arte como fallos contradictorios, sino precisamente poner de manifiesto las importantes apreciaciones de Krohn y Rigo 23 en lo referente a esta inclusión para otros imaginarios medioambientales y en particular para un mayor análisis ecocrítico. Poniendo énfasis en las condiciones materiales e institucionales, los actuales medios y sitios de producción cultural, y las tecnologías para la difusión de información, estas obras de arte ponen de relieve y representan lo que a menudo se elimina en la ecuación y en el análisis crítico.

IntroductionTasmania hangs from the map of Australia like a drop in freefall from the substance of the mainland. Often the whole state is mislaid from Australian maps and logos (Reddit). Tasmania has, at least since federation, been considered peripheral—a region seen as isolated, a ‘problem’ economically, politically, and culturally. However, Tasmania not only cleaves to the ‘north island’ of Australia but is also subject to the gravitational pull of an even greater land mass—Antarctica. In this article, we upturn the political conventions of map-making that place both Antarctica and Tasmania in obscure positions at the base of the globe. We show how a changing global climate re-frames Antarctica and the Southern Ocean as key drivers of worldwide environmental shifts. The liquid and solid water between Tasmania and Antarctica is revealed not as a homogenous barrier, but as a dynamic and relational medium linking the Tasmanian archipelago with Antarctica. When Antarctica becomes the focus, the script is flipped: Tasmania is no longer on the edge, but core to a network of gateways into the southern land. The state’s capital of Hobart can from this perspective be understood as an “Antarctic city”, central to the geopolitics, economy, and culture of the frozen continent (Salazar et al.). Viewed from the south, we argue, Tasmania is not a problem, but an opportunity for a form of ecological, cultural, economic, and political sustainability that opens up the southern continent to science, discovery, and imagination.A Centre at the End of the Earth? Tasmania as ParadoxThe islands of Tasmania owe their existence to climate change: a period of warming at the end of the last ice age melted the vast sheets of ice covering the polar regions, causing sea levels to rise by more than one hundred metres (Tasmanian Climate Change Office 8). Eleven thousand years ago, Aboriginal people would have witnessed the rise of what is now called Bass Strait, turning what had been a peninsula into an archipelago, with the large island of Tasmania at its heart. The heterogeneous practices and narratives of Tasmanian regional identity have been shaped by the geography of these islands, and their connection to the Southern Ocean and Antarctica. Regions, understood as “centres of collective consciousness and sociospatial identities” (Paasi 241) are constantly reproduced and reimagined through place-based social practices and communications over time. As we will show, diverse and contradictory narratives of Tasmanian regionality often co-exist, interacting in complex and sometimes complementary ways. Ecocritical literary scholar C.A. Cranston considers duality to be embedded in the textual construction of Tasmania, writing “it was hell, it was heaven, it was penal, it was paradise” (29). Tasmania is multiply polarised: it is both isolated and connected; close and far away; rich in resources and poor in capital; the socially conservative birthplace of radical green politics (Hay 60). The weather, as if sensing the fine balance of these paradoxes, blows hot and cold at a moment’s notice.Tasmania has wielded extraordinary political influence at times in its history—notably during the settlement of Melbourne in 1835 (Boyce), and during protests against damming the Franklin River in the early 1980s (Mercer). However, twentieth-century historical and political narratives of Tasmania portray the Bass Strait as a barrier, isolating Tasmanians from the mainland (Harwood 61). Sir Bede Callaghan, who headed one of a long line of federal government inquiries into “the Tasmanian problem” (Harwood 106), was clear that Tasmania was a victim of its own geography:the major disability facing the people of Tasmania (although some residents may consider it an advantage) is that Tasmania is an island. Separation from the mainland adversely affects the economy of the State and the general welfare of the people in many ways. (Callaghan 3)This perspective may stem from the fact that Tasmania has maintained the lowest Gross Domestic Product per capita of all states since federation (Bureau of Infrastructure Transport and Regional Economics 9). Socially, economically, and culturally, Tasmania consistently ranks among the worst regions of Australia. Statistical comparisons with other parts of Australia reveal the population’s high unemployment, low wages, poor educational outcomes, and bad health (West 31). The state’s remoteness and isolation from the mainland states and its reliance on federal income have contributed to the whole of Tasmania, including Hobart, being classified as ‘regional’ by the Australian government, in an attempt to promote immigration and economic growth (Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development 1). Tasmania is indeed both regional and remote. However, in this article we argue that, while regionality may be cast as a disadvantage, the island’s remote location is also an asset, particularly when viewed from a far southern perspective (Image 1).Image 1: Antarctica (Orthographic Projection). Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons, Modified Shading of Tasmania and Addition of Captions by H. Nielsen.Connecting Oceans/Collapsing DistanceTasmania and Antarctica have been closely linked in the past—the future archipelago formed a land bridge between Antarctica and northern land masses until the opening of the Tasman Seaway some 32 million years ago (Barker et al.). The far south was tangible to the Indigenous people of the island in the weather blowing in from the Southern Ocean, while the southern lights, or “nuyina”, formed a visible connection (Australia’s new icebreaker vessel is named RSV Nuyina in recognition of these links). In the contemporary Australian imagination, Tasmania tends to be defined by its marine boundaries, the sea around the islands represented as flat, empty space against which to highlight the topography of its landscape and the isolation of its position (Davies et al.). A more relational geographic perspective illuminates the “power of cross-currents and connections” (Stratford et al. 273) across these seascapes. The sea country of Tasmania is multiple and heterogeneous: the rough, shallow waters of the island-scattered Bass Strait flow into the Tasman Sea, where the continental shelf descends toward an abyssal plain studded with volcanic seamounts. To the south, the Southern Ocean provides nutrient-rich upwellings that attract fish and cetacean populations. Tasmania’s coast is a dynamic, liminal space, moving and changing in response to the global currents that are driven by the shifting, calving and melting ice shelves and sheets in Antarctica.Oceans have long been a medium of connection between Tasmania and Antarctica. In the early colonial period, when the seas were the major thoroughfares of the world and inland travel was treacherous and slow, Tasmania’s connection with the Southern Ocean made it a valuable hub for exploration and exploitation of the south. Between 1642 and 1900, early European explorers were followed by British penal colonists, convicts, sealers, and whalers (Kriwoken and Williamson 93). Tasmania was well known to polar explorers, with expeditions led by Jules Dumont d’Urville, James Clark Ross, Roald Amundsen, and Douglas Mawson all transiting through the port of Hobart. Now that the city is no longer a whaling hub, growing populations of cetaceans continue to migrate past the islands on their annual journeys from the tropics, across the Sub-Antarctic Front and Antarctic circumpolar current, and into the south polar region, while southern species such as leopard seals are occasionally seen around Tasmania (Tasmania Parks and Wildlife). Although the water surrounding Tasmania and Antarctica is at times homogenised as a ‘barrier’, rendering these places isolated, the bodies of water that surround both are in fact permeable, and regularly crossed by both humans and marine species. The waters are diverse in their physical characteristics, underlying topography, sea life, and relationships, and serve to connect many different ocean regions, ecosystems, and weather patterns.Views from the Far SouthWhen considered in terms of its relative proximity to Antarctic, rather than its distance from Australia’s political and economic centres, Tasmania’s identity undergoes a significant shift. A sign at Cockle Creek, in the state’s far south, reminds visitors that they are closer to Antarctica than to Cairns, invoking a discourse of connectedness that collapses the standard ten-day ship voyage to Australia’s closest Antarctic station into a unit comparable with the routinely scheduled 5.5 hour flight to North Queensland. Hobart is the logistical hub for the Australian Antarctic Division and the French Institut Polaire Francais (IPEV), and has hosted Antarctic vessels belonging to the USA, South Korea, and Japan in recent years. From a far southern perspective, Hobart is not a regional Australian capital but a global polar hub. This alters the city’s geographic imaginary not only in a latitudinal sense—from “top down” to “bottom up”—but also a longitudinal one. Via its southward connection to Antarctica, Hobart is also connected east and west to four other recognized gateways: Cape Town in South Africa, Christchurch in New Zealand; Punta Arenas in Chile; and Ushuaia in Argentina (Image 2). The latter cities are considered small by international standards, but play an outsized role in relation to Antarctica.Image 2: H. Nielsen with a Sign Announcing Distances between Antarctic ‘Gateway’ Cities and Antarctica, Ushuaia, Argentina, 2018. Image Credit: Nicki D'Souza.These five cities form what might be called—to adapt geographer Klaus Dodds’ term—a ‘Southern Rim’ around the South Polar region (Dodds Geopolitics). They exist in ambiguous relationship to each other. Although the five cities signed a Statement of Intent in 2009 committing them to collaboration, they continue to compete vigorously for northern hemisphere traffic and the brand identity of the most prominent global gateway. A state government brochure spruiks Hobart, for example, as the “perfect Antarctic Gateway” emphasising its uniqueness and “natural advantages” in this regard (Tasmanian Government, 2016). In practice, the cities are automatically differentiated by their geographic position with respect to Antarctica. Although the ‘ice continent’ is often conceived as one entity, it too has regions, in both scientific and geographical senses (Terauds and Lee; Antonello). Hobart provides access to parts of East Antarctica, where the Australian, French, Japanese, and Chinese programs (among others) have bases; Cape Town is a useful access point for Europeans going to Dronning Maud Land; Christchurch is closest to the Ross Sea region, site of the largest US base; and Punta Arenas and Ushuaia neighbour the Antarctic Peninsula, home to numerous bases as well as a thriving tourist industry.The Antarctic sector is important to the Tasmanian economy, contributing $186 million (AUD) in 2017/18 (Wells; Gutwein; Tasmanian Polar Network). Unsurprisingly, Tasmania’s gateway brand has been actively promoted, with the 2016 Australian Antarctic Strategy and 20 Year Action Plan foregrounding the need to “Build Tasmania’s status as the premier East Antarctic Gateway for science and operations” and the state government releasing a “Tasmanian Antarctic Gateway Strategy” in 2017. The Chinese Antarctic program has been a particular focus: a Memorandum of Understanding focussed on Australia and China’s Antarctic relations includes a “commitment to utilise Australia, including Tasmania, as an Antarctic ‘gateway’.” (Australian Antarctic Division). These efforts towards a closer relationship with China have more recently come under attack as part of a questioning of China’s interests in the region (without, it should be noted, a concomitant questioning of Australia’s own considerable interests) (Baker 9). In these exchanges, a global power and a state of Australia generally classed as regional and peripheral are brought into direct contact via the even more remote Antarctic region. This connection was particularly visible when Chinese President Xi Jinping travelled to Hobart in 2014, in a visit described as both “strategic” and “incongruous” (Burden). There can be differences in how this relationship is narrated to domestic and international audiences, with issues of sovereignty and international cooperation variously foregrounded, laying the ground for what Dodds terms “awkward Antarctic nationalism” (1).Territory and ConnectionsThe awkwardness comes to a head in Tasmania, where domestic and international views of connections with the far south collide. Australia claims sovereignty over almost 6 million km2 of the Antarctic continent—a claim that in area is “roughly the size of mainland Australia minus Queensland” (Bergin). This geopolitical context elevates the importance of a regional part of Australia: the claims to Antarctic territory (which are recognised only by four other claimant nations) are performed not only in Antarctic localities, where they are made visible “with paraphernalia such as maps, flags, and plaques” (Salazar 55), but also in Tasmania, particularly in Hobart and surrounds. A replica of Mawson’s Huts in central Hobart makes Australia’s historic territorial interests in Antarctica visible an urban setting, foregrounding the figure of Douglas Mawson, the well-known Australian scientist and explorer who led the expeditions that proclaimed Australia’s sovereignty in the region of the continent roughly to its south (Leane et al.). Tasmania is caught in a balancing act, as it fosters international Antarctic connections (such hosting vessels from other national programs), while also playing a key role in administering what is domestically referred to as the Australian Antarctic Territory. The rhetoric of protection can offer common ground: island studies scholar Godfrey Baldacchino notes that as island narratives have moved “away from the perspective of the ‘explorer-discoverer-colonist’” they have been replaced by “the perspective of the ‘custodian-steward-environmentalist’” (49), but reminds readers that a colonising disposition still lurks beneath the surface. It must be remembered that terms such as “stewardship” and “leadership” can undertake sovereignty labour (Dodds “Awkward”), and that Tasmania’s Antarctic connections can be mobilised for a range of purposes. When Environment Minister Greg Hunt proclaimed at a press conference that: “Hobart is the gateway to the Antarctic for the future” (26 Apr. 2016), the remark had meaning within discourses of both sovereignty and economics. Tasmania’s capital was leveraged as a way to position Australia as a leader in the Antarctic arena.From ‘Gateway’ to ‘Antarctic City’While discussion of Antarctic ‘Gateway’ Cities often focuses on the economic and logistical benefit of their Antarctic connections, Hobart’s “gateway” identity, like those of its counterparts, stretches well beyond this, encompassing geological, climatic, historical, political, cultural and scientific links. Even the southerly wind, according to cartoonist Jon Kudelka, “has penguins in it” (Image 3). Hobart residents feel a high level of connection to Antarctica. In 2018, a survey of 300 randomly selected residents of Greater Hobart was conducted under the umbrella of the “Antarctic Cities” Australian Research Council Linkage Project led by Assoc. Prof. Juan Francisco Salazar (and involving all three present authors). Fourteen percent of respondents reported having been involved in an economic activity related to Antarctica, and 36% had attended a cultural event about Antarctica. Connections between the southern continent and Hobart were recognised as important: 71.9% agreed that “people in my city can influence the cultural meanings that shape our relationship to Antarctica”, while 90% agreed or strongly agreed that Hobart should play a significant role as a custodian of Antarctica’s future, and 88.4% agreed or strongly agreed that: “How we treat Antarctica is a test of our approach to ecological sustainability.” Image 3: “The Southerly” Demonstrates How Weather Connects Hobart and Antarctica. Image Credit: Jon Kudelka, Reproduced with Permission.Hobart, like the other gateways, activates these connections in its conscious place-branding. The city is particularly strong as a centre of Antarctic research: signs at the cruise-ship terminal on the waterfront claim that “There are more Antarctic scientists based in Hobart […] than at any other one place on earth, making Hobart a globally significant contributor to our understanding of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean.” Researchers are based at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS), the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), and the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD), with several working between institutions. Many Antarctic researchers located elsewhere in the world also have a connection with the place through affiliations and collaborations, leading journalist Jo Chandler to assert that “the breadth and depth of Hobart’s knowledge of ice, water, and the life forms they nurture […] is arguably unrivalled anywhere in the world” (86).Hobart also plays a significant role in Antarctica’s governance, as the site of the secretariats for the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) and the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels (ACAP), and as host of the Antarctic Consultative Treaty Meetings on more than one occasion (1986, 2012). The cultural domain is active, with Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) featuring a permanent exhibit, “Islands to Ice”, emphasising the ocean as connecting the two places; the Mawson’s Huts Replica Museum aiming (among other things) to “highlight Hobart as the gateway to the Antarctic continent for the Asia Pacific region”; and a biennial Australian Antarctic Festival drawing over twenty thousand visitors, about a sixth of them from interstate or overseas (Hingley). Antarctic links are evident in the city’s natural and built environment: the dolerite columns of Mt Wellington, the statue of the Tasmanian Antarctic explorer Louis Bernacchi on the waterfront, and the wharfs that regularly accommodate icebreakers such as the Aurora Australis and the Astrolabe. Antarctica is figured as a southern neighbour; as historian Tom Griffiths puts it, Tasmanians “grow up with Antarctica breathing down their necks” (5). As an Antarctic City, Hobart mediates access to Antarctica both physically and in the cultural imaginary.Perhaps in recognition of the diverse ways in which a region or a city might be connected to Antarctica, researchers have recently been suggesting critical approaches to the ‘gateway’ label. C. Michael Hall points to a fuzziness in the way the term is applied, noting that it has drifted from its initial definition (drawn from economic geography) as denoting an access and supply point to a hinterland that produces a certain level of economic benefits. While Hall looks to keep the term robustly defined to avoid empty “local boosterism” (272–73), Gabriela Roldan aims to move the concept “beyond its function as an entry and exit door”, arguing that, among other things, the local community should be actively engaged in the Antarctic region (57). Leane, examining the representation of Hobart as a gateway in historical travel texts, concurs that “ingress and egress” are insufficient descriptors of Tasmania’s relationship with Antarctica, suggesting that at least discursively the island is positioned as “part of an Antarctic rim, itself sharing qualities of the polar region” (45). The ARC Linkage Project described above, supported by the Hobart City Council, the State Government and the University of Tasmania, as well as other national and international partners, aims to foster the idea of the Hobart and its counterparts as ‘Antarctic cities’ whose citizens act as custodians for the South Polar region, with a genuine concern for and investment in its future.Near and Far: Local Perspectives A changing climate may once again herald a shift in the identity of the Tasmanian islands. Recognition of the central role of Antarctica in regulating the global climate has generated scientific and political re-evaluation of the region. Antarctica is not only the planet’s largest heat sink but is the engine of global water currents and wind patterns that drive weather patterns and biodiversity across the world (Convey et al. 543). For example, Tas van Ommen’s research into Antarctic glaciology shows the tangible connection between increased snowfall in coastal East Antarctica and patterns of drought southwest Western Australia (van Ommen and Morgan). Hobart has become a global centre of marine and Antarctic science, bringing investment and development to the city. As the global climate heats up, Tasmania—thanks to its low latitude and southerly weather patterns—is one of the few regions in Australia likely to remain temperate. This is already leading to migration from the mainland that is impacting house prices and rental availability (Johnston; Landers 1). The region’s future is therefore closely entangled with its proximity to the far south. Salazar writes that “we cannot continue to think of Antarctica as the end of the Earth” (67). Shifting Antarctica into focus also brings Tasmania in from the margins. As an Antarctic city, Hobart assumes a privileged positioned on the global stage. This allows the city to present itself as central to international research efforts—in contrast to domestic views of the place as a small regional capital. The city inhabits dual identities; it is both on the periphery of Australian concerns and at the centre of Antarctic activity. Tasmania, then, is not in freefall, but rather at the forefront of a push to recognise Antarctica as entangled with its neighbours to the north.AcknowledgementsThis work was supported by the Australian Research Council under LP160100210.ReferencesAntonello, Alessandro. “Finding Place in Antarctica.” Antarctica and the Humanities. Eds. Peder Roberts, Lize-Marie van der Watt, and Adrian Howkins. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 181–204.Australian Government. 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