Abstract: Garbage, in various forms, emerges as a theme in contemporary Arctic literature, drawing attention to the wasteful legacies of colonialism and exploration; to the current pollution by industries, power plants, and pesticides; and to pipelines and oil spills. This paper gleans various fragments from contemporary texts that draw attention to these wastes in the Arctic and reads the waste as a signal of human influence that offers an alternative to the dominant discourses about ice melt and ice loss. Waste, thereby, becomes a concept and process to think about resources, time, human and nonhuman relations, and social and environmental justice in the region that is most visibly affected by the ongoing climate change.
Svenja Engelmann-Kewitz (Sat,) studied this question.