Alister Wedderburn

Nov 7, 2024 | niche-canada.org | Alister Wedderburn

Kinngait artist Jamasee Pitseolak’s carving Martin Frobisher, made of a locally quarried steatite or soapstone, depicts the Elizabethan privateer and explorer as a mechanical excavator. Between 1576 and 1578 Frobisher led three expeditions to Qikiqtaaluk (Baffin Island), initially in search for a Northwest Passage. On the first of these three expeditions, however, Frobisher found an ‘ore’ that hinted – wrongly, as it turned out – at the presence of gold.

Jan 28, 2023 | tandfonline.com | Alister Wedderburn

AbstractThis article locates Martin Frobisher’s voyages to the North American Arctic in 1576, 1577 and 1578 in relation to the thought of Jamaican critic and theorist Sylvia Wynter. For Wynter, the post-Columbian settlement and colonisation of the Americas functioned as both a crucible and proving ground for a new, racialised understanding of the human, which she calls ‘Man’.