The British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance
voyage (1914-16) was one of the last great feats of the ‘heroic
age’ of exploration. In the 1990s, the story was suddenly rediscovered in
a blaze of publicity. This article investigates why Shackleton suddenly seemed
‘a hero for our time’. It treats ‘the
explorer’ as a subject position, as articulating discourses of whiteness
and masculinity within the discourse of adventure and shows how
Shackleton’s public persona exemplified these hegemonic traits. Recent
re-enactments of his famous boat journey embody this subject position, confirming
and enriching the ideal of the heroic explorer. Finally, the article examines how
‘Shackleton’ has been taken up by the adventure travel industry
and by business management consultants strongly invested in ideals of white
men’s leadership.
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