Antarctica as cultural critique

"Beginning with what was once the "last place on earth," this book redirects discussions within the history of exploration and of globalization.Glasbergtakes on persistent cliche;s of Antarctica as exceptional territory for masculine heroics, untouched wilderness, utopia for international science, or symbol of hope for capitalism or a post-ecological future.Arguing that Antarctica is the most mediated place on earth and thus an ideal location for testing the limits of biopolitical management of population and place,this bookremaps national and postcolonial methods andoffers a new look on a "forgotten" continent now the focus of ecological concern"-- "Antarctica as Cultural Critique arrives at an auspicious time in history and on earth. Amid the celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the European "race" to the last place on earth, Antarctica -- a continent of ice and without natives -- is finally emerging as a center of global concern. Once an impediment to and backdrop for heroic endeavor, the ice itself now focuses dramas of national competition. Antarctica as Cultural Critique creates complex connections between the present ice of environmental crisis and the past through visualizations and photographs of what Ursula Le Guin names the "living ice." Antarctica as Cultural Critique links to new ways of thinking human/ non-human divides and disturbs understandings of gendered relations as fixed and hierarchical, science as progressive and rational, and history as a mode of nostalgia, remembering, or simple reinvigoration of power that does not take into consideration the effects of its content and in the case of Antarctica, the radically non-human and shifting ontology of ice itself. On Ice reconfigures the controversy over climate change and disaster capitalism by understanding Antarctica as a cultural object in itself, a site of resource and data extraction, and as workplace for national science. On Ice contributes to new interest in contested/ resistant territories, messy borders, un-rational, uninhabitable, and anti-anthropomorphic attachment to territory"--