Abstract

Recent environmental changes have sparked off unprecedented dialogues between practitioners of the earth sciences and the humanities – dialogues which defy some of the basic assumptions underpinning western science. However, a gap still persists between natural scientists and scholars in the humanities in their tendency to concentrate respectively on solid matter and fluid meaning. This article seeks to close this gap by paying attention to glacial ice and concrete, materials often taken to mark, respectively, the onset and culmination of human history. Historically, ice and concrete have been regarded as solid fluids. We argue, however, that both are caught in a punctuated understanding of change that turns fluidity and solidity into mutually exclusive properties, thus rendering the solid fluid as an oxymoron. The article concludes by comparing this “oxymoronic syndrome” with the ways in which the Inuit of West Greenland experience their cryogenic landscapes as nurturing environments in constant becoming.