Cabinet 59: The North

ISBN-13: 9781932698671 / Angielski / Twarda / 2016 / 112 str.

Sina Najafi

Opis

The idea of the North in modernity--its associations with sparseness and scarcity, to hardships and remoteness--has fed countless narratives of journeying to places and fates unknown. In classical antiquity, however, the north was a place of perfection. In the 5th century BCE, Pindar wrote of the wonders of Hyperborea--a northerly land whose natives lived unaffected by -sickness or ruinous old age, - by -toil or battles.- The poet also claimed this kingdom could be found -neither by ship nor on foot, - and it is this mix of terrestrial encounter and lyric indeterminacy that continues to characterize our idea of the North. Cabinet 59, with a special section on -The North, - includes Jessica Rowan on five centuries of expeditions in search of the Northwest Passage; Joe Duncan on the US government's rush to exploit Arctic resources made newly accessible by global warming; and Bettina Sierra on the attempts to recreate the atmospheric effects of the aurora borealis.