“The sailors dearly love to make up”: Cross-Dressing and Blackface during Polar Exploration

Abstract

This research project writes against the hegemonic narratives of polar
exploration in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Using the published
and unpublished diaries of explorers from 1819 to 1904, it asks how queer,
critical race and postcolonial critiques of the hyper-masculine, all-white image
of the polar explorer can open up new understandings of polar spaces both in the
nineteenth century and today, when similar nationalistic, colonial enterprises are
at play. Primarily informed by Lisa Bloom’s feminist, postcolonial review of
American ideologies of polar exploration, this project discusses the large
disparity between the intensely masculine image of the polar hero-adventurer
and the particularly Anglo-American, but also Norwegian, tendency to perform
drag during polar expeditions. It also examines the high incidence of blackface
theatre: in one of the whitest spaces conceivable, sailors donned the black mask
to air a complex constellation of white, colonial and class grievances and
aspirations. Polar performance, which evolved to have its own idiosyncrasies
shaped by the natural and social polar environment, affected colonial relations
with Inuit, the stuff of farce being pressed into the service of imperial force.
Indigenous populations witnessed grotesque displays of Anglo-American
gendered and racial values through theatrical recreation, while simultaneously
resisting the encroachment of expedition society through similar but seemingly
smaller avenues of performative resistance. Broadly speaking, this project offers
this more radical, revisionist interpretation at a time when interest in the Arctic
and Antarctic is soaring due to anthropogenic climate change. It challenges the
current reappropriation of heroic, hyper-masculine figures by national andprivate interests through celebrating their lesser-known but equally fascinating mid-winter activities.

Date of Award	2015
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	King's College London
Supervisor	John Howard (Supervisor) & Mark Turner (Supervisor)