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

• Published in: Polar Record
• Main Author: Mancilla, Alejandra
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 2019
• Subjects: Antarctic; Blanche; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Polar Record
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s003224741900069x; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S003224741900069X

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.