Reconsidering Polar Literature in the Anthropocene: Locating Hope in the Works of Jean McNeil and Barry Lopez

This article examines the capacities of polar literature within an interwoven framework to think through climate crisis and human involvement therein in the midst of the Anthropocene. Ice Diaries (2016) and Arctic Dreams (1986) provide the opportunity to reconsider Earth’s cryosphere in literary form as mediated places that participate in the global network of the planetary imaginary (Clarke). Examining polar literature through a reparative lens (Sedgwick) enables the tutelary aspects of both landscapes to emerge as they provide strategies for investigating present and future trouble (Haraway). Employing theories from Earth System Science and spatial studies, this paper locates the potential for hope in remote regions that are nonetheless embedded within global realities—climatic and political—through the sharing of stories that encourage life to flourish even in what appear to be the harshest of circumstances. (IMK and IS)