On the Road with Chrysler: Virtual Capitalism and Empire without Territory

Abstract

Antarctica has posed a problem for capital in two contradictory ways. One, in that it is difficult to profit from barren ice; and two, in that it is even more difficult to account for the many ways that capital has in fact profited from the idea and the material facts of Antarctic territory, including the very idea of its unprofitability. The first, few people would argue with as there are countless laments to the fruitlessness of ice and to its limited possibilities for capital and empire. The second is a more interesting problem, suggesting that valuing Antarctica is as much indexed to the representational as well as logistical systems that frame Antarctica—such as exploration and empire or cartography—as it is to the Antarcticas that are so framed. Extending the previous chapter’s discussion of US official exploration and policy from the 1920s through the era of the ATS and its present science-corporate management, this chapter looks more closely at the virtual and actual infrastructures of capital involvement in Antarctica. While contemporary Antarctic development may appear to be broadly humanist, benignly scientific—and with the establishment of a “road to pole” even quaint and fordist in its production mode—the government–corporate advertising strategies and built environments in Antarctica constitute a new form of empire and possession of territory without territory.