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Christy Collis, "Walking or Sitting: Practising Australian Antarctica" It is by now axiomatic in spatial studies that geographical space is not simply a physical given, but a complex composite of material, cultural, and practised environments. Space, as Certeau famously states, is a practised place. This paper attends to two Australian Antarctic spatial practices: walking and sitting. Walking predominates as the public, and the politicised spatial practice in Australian Antarctic space: a history of explorers, or white men walking, constitutes the geopolitical and mythic basis of Australia's massive claim to 42% of the continent, and narratives of white walkers still dominate media productions of Australian Antarctic space. Yet for every walker, there are numerous Antarctican sitters: Australians working in the static bases--scientists, plumbers, cooks, diesel mechanics, communications workers, weather observers--people whose Antarctican spatial practice is not the linear trek, but the tangled mesh of domestic settlement. The spatialities generated by the two divergent practices, while both part of the complex that is Australian Antarctic space, frequently conflict: policy-makers debate whether money should be spent on bases or on expeditions, media representations figure walkers as heroic and sitters as either invisible or pampered, and sitters themselves regularly express their desire to enter the other category and to walk. This paper considers the conflicting spatialities produced by these two Australian Antarctic spatial practices, framing the conflict as one between gendered imperial and colonial spatialities. Biography: Christy Collis is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Australian Studies Centre at the University of Queensland. She is currently working on a book titled The Spirit of Possession: A Spatial History of Australian Antarctica. Her research investigates the cultural foundations of Australia's sovereignty claim to 42% of the Antarctic continent. |
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