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A continent of and for whiteness?: “White” colonialism and the 1959 Antarctic Treaty

Part of: 60th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 November 2019

Alejandra Mancilla Open the ORCID record for Alejandra Mancilla [Opens in a new window]
Alejandra Mancilla*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas, Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo, Norway
*
Author for correspondence: Alejandra Mancilla, Email: alejandra.mancilla@ifikk.uio.no
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Abstract

There are at least four ways in which Antarctic colonialism was white: it was paradigmatically performed by white men; it consisted in the taking of vast, white expanses of land; it was carried out with a carte blanche (literally, “blank card”) attitude; and it was presented to the world as a white, innocent adventure. While the first, racial whiteness has been amply problematised, I suggest that the last three illuminate yet other moral wrongs of the Antarctic colonial project. Moreover, they might be constitutive of a larger class of “white” colonialisms beyond the White Continent.

Keywords

AntarcticaColonialismOuter spaceTerritorial claims1959 Antarctic Treaty
Type
Commentary
Information
Polar Record , Volume 55 , Issue 5 , September 2019 , pp. 317 - 319
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

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