What Is Forbidden in Antarctica: A Passover Reading
<p>Antarctica is, legally speaking, a no man’s land. Since the signing of the Antarctic Treaty in 1961, the continent has been officially non-national. Antarctica is the earth as the earth was before people tried to claim it, when we were instead claimed by it: people of the plains, river people, mountain people, people of the sea. Antarctica belongs to no country; no government controls it. And yet, in Antarctica, much is forbidden.</p>
<p>Antarctica can itself be forbidding, of course, in its vastness, its silence, its whiteness, its extreme cold. Its history of expeditions is forbidding, too: Endurance crushed by ice, sled dogs eaten, explorers frozen in place, snowed under, swallowed up, disappeared. And Antarctica in fact simply forbids certain things: you may not take off your gloves, for example, or expose your skin to the air without inviting frostbite. At the Pole, you cannot even smile without pain. Under your grin, your gums will begin to freeze almost instantly.</p>
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