Alice Miller
Science on Ice: Discovering the Secrets of Antarctica, by Veronika Meduna (Auckland University Press, 2012), 225 pp., $59.99; These Rough Notes, by Bill Manhire, Anne Noble, Norman Meehan, and Hannah Griffin (Victoria University Press, 2012), 64 pp., $40.<
A Canadian band I once loved sang an unlikely song about an Antarctic explorer meeting Foucault in Paris. The explorer, having noted Foucault’s resemblance to Shackleton, concludes the meeting with the lines:
thank you for the flowers and the book by Derrida
but I must be getting back to dear Antarctica.
This was my unlikely refrain as I kept returning to these two books, which approach dear Antarctica in very different ways – both trying to haul forth its expansive, freezing mass, its strange inhabitants, searing winds, and wild force of questions. [Read more…]