‘By endurance we conquer’

Abstract

The British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance voyage (1914-16) was one of the last great feats of the ‘heroic age’ of exploration. In the 1990s, the story was suddenly rediscovered in a blaze of publicity. This article investigates why Shackleton suddenly seemed ‘a hero for our time’. It treats ‘the explorer’ as a subject position, as articulating discourses of whiteness and masculinity within the discourse of adventure and shows how Shackleton’s public persona exemplified these hegemonic traits. Recent re-enactments of his famous boat journey embody this subject position, confirming and enriching the ideal of the heroic explorer. Finally, the article examines how ‘Shackleton’ has been taken up by the adventure travel industry and by business management consultants strongly invested in ideals of white men’s leadership.