The Great White Beast
Mx. Science as a liminal figure, conjures many shapeshifting, associative frames, depending on who encounters them. Such an idea may potentially be put into dialogue with traditional Inuit beliefs and legends around the polar bear, which is sometimes traditionally referred to as the "Great White Bear", or the "Great White Beast" (Jimmy Qirqut, Gjoa Haven Elder, 2022). According to some of these legends, the polar bear is also a shapeshifting figure. Sometimes human, sometimes bear.
Although some resonance can be found between Mx. Science and Inuit legends of shapeshifting polar bears, I have focussed on the how the liminal presence of Mx. Science can affectively and performatively signify other "Great White Beasts". For example, the one of an ever shapeshifting "Great White Beast" of settler-colonialism, that continues to haunt polar bear management and monitoring and other Arctic-science spaces. Another figure that Mx. Science can be considered to iteratively perform is that of the "wicked problem", that is seemingly im/possible to "tame" (see Termeer et al. 2019). Mx. Science as the (Great White) "Beast" of the "polar bear problem".