Antarctic Convergence: The Problem of Antarctic Mapping

Abstract

Mapping is the cultural history of Antarctica. Before the ninteenth century, mapping alone constituted the biopolitical relation to the territory. Due to the time lag between a southern landmass being imagined and its actualization through exploration and discovery, mapping has had a very specific, even disproportionate importance for Antarctica. Declared in 1895 as the last undiscovered place on earth by the Royal Geographical Society, and lacking natives, Antarctica has been preeminently defined by its mapping. This chapter concerns the distorting effects of modern global mapping, from the development of the post-World War II Treaty System’s sector mapping of the continent, to the geographic information system (GIS) mapping of Google Earth Antarctica, a citizen-participant, open-ended satellite–terrestrial mapping.