Colonial imagery of ‘Arctic hysteria’ and its resignification in Pia Arke’s work of counter-memory

Abstract

The figure of the ‘Arctic hysteric’ emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the discourses of polar explorations and Arctic colonisation as part of photographic and narrative archive of Westerners’ encounter with Greenlandic populations. This racialised and gendered trope made a mark on the European collective memory of Arctic explorations, solidifying an image of native Greenlanders as infantile, frail and in need of protection from the deleterious effects of civilisation. As such, post-colonial scholars have suggested that ‘Arctic hysteria’ cannot be regarded as a solely psychological diagnostic, but needs to be historicised in the context of colonisation and the social disruptions and hardship it brought about for the Inuit. This article, first, undertakes an analysis of the photographic figurations of ‘Arctic hysteria’ to investigate their place in the collective memories of polar explorations, including erasing the role of Indigenous people in these explorations, and, more broadly, construing imaginary geography of the Arctic as an uninhabited and empty place, a canvas for colonial projections, rather than a native homeland. Next, it focuses on artistic resignifications of ‘Arctic hysteria’ in the work of Greenlandic-Danish artist, Pia Arke, and argues that these resignifications are an example of a decolonial project of counter-memory of the Arctic, which is based on a refusal of regarding colonisation as past. Tracing coloniality and its effects in the domains of the body, affect and intimacy, Arke explores the possibilities of creating a shared and relational Arctic memory.