Against the domain of Master Narratives: Archaeology and the Antarctic History

SENATORE, MARIA XIMENA; ZARANKIN, ANDRES

Contra la tiranía tipológica en arqueología: Una visión desde Suramérica

University of Florida Press

Lugar: Florida; Año: 2011;

A typology is a scheme for classifying and ordering the world. As such, it implies a form of knowledge by which any given reality is categorized and represented. However, typological schemes do not limit themselves to classifying and ordering just physical objects. People, stories, events, and processes can all be ordered and classified according to typological schemes that correspond to specific logics, explicit or otherwise. Our initial research aims to understand how the history of Antarctica is structured in the official and dominant discourses. We begin with the idea that the “typical cultural strategy of dominant actors and institutions is not to establish uniformity, but it seeks to organize all difference” (Sewell 1999: 56). We then center our attention on the organization of these differences and use frameworks of interpretation that allow us to analyze the production and allocation of the classifications and exclusions that results in the creation of the master narratives of Antarctica. In this paper we have discussed the relationship between typological thinking and the construction of the official history or of master narratives for the Antarctica. A classification and exclusion scheme has structured the way of looking at the white continent’s past. This way of looking at the past has been accepted as the truth and assumed as representative of everything and everyone. We hope that we have demonstrated that, for Antarctica, the narratives constitute “the” mode of knowledge of its past. To this end, we identified the master narratives which in their written and material dimensions produce and reproduce the visible history of Antarctica. We presented archaeology as a point of rupture for the thought schemes that are implicit in the master narratives of Antarctic History. Our analyses suggest that the master narratives of Antarctic past present a conceptualization of Antarctic History, in terms of exploration vs exploitation. Written and material dimensions of the master narratives offer a version of the past. The histories related to scientific exploration are “preserved”, by celebrating specific events, dates, personalities, and specific locations; whereas stories associated with the exploitation of Antarctic resources have been, and are still, silenced and forgotten. It is worth mentioning that many of the stories of sealers and whalers carry no specific protagonists, exact dates, or apparent “historical relevance” to be commemorated. Even if there are numerous material remains widely dispersed, they are scarcely considered in the conservation agenda for Antarctic Heritage. The schemes presented in the official history of Antarctic make homogeneous what is heterogeneous and they hide away pluralities. Historical Archaeology is seen here as a different standpoint, focused on the study of processes, working with the material remains of ordinary people and their everyday life, incorporating new characters and invisible stories into the history of Antarctica. Through those stories, we may begin to overcome the authoritarianism of the typological classifications in the official history. A new past is open and a new present awaits.