Tristes Arctiques. Exploration, ethnographie et l'émergence de l'Eskimo
The project centres on Arctic anthropology and seeks to understand the entanglement of landscape, history and colonial encounter in the perception of the Inuit peoples. It takes off from a sustained interest in the history of Arctic exploration and from ethnographic fieldwork in Thule, NW-Greenland, over the past eight years.
The main title of the project, Tristes Arctiques, echoes the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, whose Tristes Tropiques (1955) remains an inspiration. The project develops his insight into the clash between the modern world and traditional life with a view to present day concerns in the Arctic, including the dramatic climatic changes, and explores how far ethnographic observations are coloured by the observers’ historical position.
Three main analytical moves are made: The first explores the perception of the ‘Arctic frontier’ as partly made up of an overpowering nature making it impossible to live and study it from ‘outside’. The second develops the notion of a ‘human terrain’, as different from both territory and landscape, and related to the plasticity of perception and the eventness of place. Finally, the ‘living resources’ by which the hunting communities live, offer an entry into inter-species engagement as part of the local life-world. Between them, these moves show how the intimate connection with the natural world has contributed to the perceived radical otherness of the Arctic peoples. |
