ONLINE CURRENTS VOL3 - Flipbook - Page 16
Antarctica - A New Wild West, at the Ends of the Earth
If our oceans are the least policeable space on earth, then its most extreme representation
are the waters around Antarctica, and the continent itself, which has become an accelerated
manifestation of the interests of the global body politic.
Almost everyone on earth has some hint of knowledge about Antarctica. It could be the
stories of who founded the continent, or already realize the importance of ice sheets for the
Earth’s climate, or even that you may proudly know that polar bears are in fact from the other
end of the planet - or just that it even exists as the most remote space on earth. What may
come more as a surprise, however, is that, especially in the case of Antarctic history, our
knowledge may be much more attuned to national interests than we actually realize.
For the British the names and the cultural memory will revolve around Scott and Shackleton;
for the French the touchstone will be Jules Dumont; for the Russians the namesake of the
Bellingshausen Sea: Fabian von Bellingshausen 28. For the Norwegians, of course it is Roald
Amundsen 29. Even more interestingly, for Chileans it will revolve around their ‘slice’ of
Antarctica, which receives nightly weather forecasts on the news. This also happens to be the
same area of territory claimed by Argentina and the United Kingdom 30, despite the fact that
the existing Antarctic Treaty disallows appropriation by country. But of course, in a world
where accords play second fiddle to geopolitical interests, possession is nine-tenths of the
law.
This national history-making is no accident, and speaks to nation-building in the collective
memory. And where every nation has its own project, which is broadly to pursue self-interest,
it cannot be undertaken without the will of the people. So there is a need to co-opt society
into believing that not only do they have a stake in a place (through the stories which it tells),
but that it has something to lose.
The public narrative of Antarctica relates mainly to environmental protection; remarkable
ecosystems which are to be protected for the greater good, which are the heritage of
mankind - fundamentally, however, a thin veil that is used to shield the real interest in the
continent: minerals.
Professor Klaus Dodds, at the University of Holloway, has spoken at length of hidden motives
at play in Antarctica, in particular during the Cold War period where “a future involving
further territorial claiming by the superpowers, nuclear testing and dumping, secret Soviet
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