Corpolarities: produced bodies on a cared for antarctica

Abstract

Antarctica is a peculiar territory: with extremely low temperatures, light patterns different from other continents, governed by experimental geopolitics, without indigenous population but nevertheless inhabited year by year by logistic stuff and researchers. Antarctica requires specific bodies, capable of dealing with harsh conditions. What bodies are fit enough to go to Antarctica? How do they resist? This article summarizes the results of a master's thesis in sociocultural anthropology, which attempts to address care practices as a technology that sustains the continent: environmental, physical, emotional, institutional, interpersonal and labour care, which provides scientific productivity and the continuation of the Antarctic project. Through an ethnographic approach to Julio Escudero Scientific Station in Antarctica and Punta Arenas in Chile in 2019, I travelled with scientific workers of the Antarctic Scientific Expedition (ECA55 in Spanish), concluding that Antarctic workers deploy practices of caring for themselves, others, their projects and Antarctica itself. These workers, selected and produced, Antarctica-makers, are characterized here as “cor(polar)ities”.