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As a site at the margin of terrestrial systems, Antarctica disrupts the usual practices of visual representation. This thesis investigates, what I call, chronogeographical approaches to visual culture within the Antarctic terrain. The material and theoretical chronogeographies of vision are mapped through the action of light, to elucidate on the shifting terrain of form - that is the Antarctic landscape. Historically, the thesis explores how the 1980s anti-mining campaign, organised by environmental groups challenged the political and visual hegemony of the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties. The campaign highlighted the feedback between the circulation of images and initiatives to protect the Antarctic landscape. Situated within this visual economy, the thesis focuses on how representation demarcates abstract and imaginative spaces for the production of the landscape - creating fugitive images of Antarctic spatialities. The thesis follows the fugitive testimony of the image through fields of knowledge, from the arrest and flow of landscape to the aesthetics of mobility. Critical art practice is considered as an interstice that highlights the conditions under which landscapes are given visibility, both cognitively and optically. A stratum of histories, mappings and sitings, structure the investigation into the transmission, materiality, and memory embedded in different media employed in the production of Antarctica. Through this sedimentation of geographies, the thesis proposes that the limits of representation may be found in Antarctica. It is argued that this shattering of commonly available visual languages can be a means to aerate our creative explorations of place. From this site, broader issues about the economy of the visual and the limits of visibility are examined. The thesis concludes that only by attending to the complex geographies of the image can the geopolitical aesthetics of place be accounted for.

This research explores the (re)production and circulation of geographical knowledge about the conjectured Great Southern Continent – one of the most enduring geographical ideas in the western world despite the fact that it did not exist, other than in books, maps and the human mind. The study examines how the fantastic Continent managed to survive - and even thrive – as an imaginary in Britain despite the absence of any hard evidence. The selected timeframe 1760-1777 covers a period of considerable flux in terms of cultural, imperial and global identities, witnessing a rapid expansion in geographical knowledge, provided in part by the voyages of Captain James Cook and the unprecedented rise of the British popular press who deliver this ‘news’ to the public. Using the twin archives of The Gentleman’s Magazine and daily, tri-weekly and weekly newspapers, this study critically examines the ways in which the landscapes of the Continent were variously imagined, represented and understood by the British public over the final seventeen years of the its ‘life’, ‘death’ and ‘re-birth’ as the Antarctic. Specifically, it interrogates the mechanisms used by the press to (re)produce a public imaginary for the emerging South, and the roles played by the Continent in mid-to-late eighteenth century polite society. The thesis shows how the Continent’s status as an enduring geographical myth renders it an important touchstone in an imaginative global cartography held by the eighteenth century British public. It illustrates how external spaces are powerful constructs for internal identities and epistemologies. The ultimate revelation that this provincea aurea was a barren wilderness of sea and ice triggered arguably one the most important cultural shifts in the Western geographical and imperial imagination since the discovery of the Americas – and, the thesis contends, provided an important proving ground in the battle between traditional scholarly speculation and the empiricism characterising the new scientific method.

Dans un rentier des terres arables des îles Shetland, écrit au début des années 1770, l’expression suivante apparut : « Les habitants des villages d’un même scattald sont appelés frères de scatt ». Ces quelques mots déclenchèrent une série de questions : qu’est-ce qu’un scattald ? Qu’est-ce que le scatt ? Qui sont ces frères de scatt ? Des recherches aux Archives Nationales d’Écosse et aux archives des îles Shetland ainsi que la lecture de travaux universitaires sur les questions des communautés, des communs, des coutumes, des systèmes de justice locale et sur la vie rurale à l’époque moderne conduisirent à l’écriture de cette thèse sur les communautés des îles Shetland au XVIIIe siècle. Ces communautés vivaient dans un contexte géographique particulier. Sans sous estimer le rôle de l’environnement local dans la vie des Shetlandais, cette thèse montre que celui-ci était plus un espace de possibilités que de restrictions ; il apportait des contraintes, mais tout autre environnement dans l’Europe moderne avait aussi ses limites. La vie dans les îles Shetland était, comme n’importe où en Écosse à la même époque, fondée sur les ressources locales et le développement de l’économie de marché apporta ses avantages et ses inconvénients aux habitants. Dans les îles Shetland, l’économie de marché entraîna le développement des tenures à poissons avec leurs contrats particuliers de métayage.Pour comprendre ces communautés, la thèse s’ouvre sur la manière dont elles étaient régulées. Les lois, les cours et le personnel judiciaire avaient tous un rôle à jouer dans le contrôle social des membres des communautés. Cette thèse explore aussi les activités des membres des communautés dans leur environnement. Les îles Shetland comme de nombreuses régions du nord-ouest de l’Europe à la même époque, étaient un espace de pluriactivité. À travers la pluriactivité et l’accès aux communs, les communautés shetlandaises des scattalds gardèrent un certain niveau d’indépendance même à une époque où existait la servitude pour dettes. Cette relation particulière fut rendue possible par un accès presque illimité aux communs pendant tout le XVIIIe siècle, époque pendant laquelle les déplacements sur les communs étaient possibles et où la transmission de la mémoire de ses frontières restait vivante. Des changements eurent cependant lieu sur les îles Shetland à cette époque. Les tenures à poissons ne furent qu’un élément de ces changements : les femmes commencèrent à être plus nombreuses que les hommes, la taille des terres arables cultivées par foyer diminua, les communs protégés furent lentement grignotés, et la cour de justice régionale offrit plus de possibilités de justice aux plus hauts rangs qu’aux tenanciers… Finalement, cette thèse soutient qu’au XVIIIe siècle, les communautés locales shetlandaises offraient une protection aux femmes et aux hommes qui à travers elles avaient un système de soutien organisé. / In a rental of the arable land of Shetland, written in the early 1770s, the following expression appeared: “The inhabitants of the Towns within the same Scattald are called scatt brethren.” These few words triggered a series of questions. What is a scattald? What is the scatt? Who are these ‘scatt brothers’? Research at the National Records of Scotland and at the Shetland Archives as well as the reading of academic literature on the questions of communities, commons, custom, local judicial systems and rural life in the early modern period led to the writing of a thesis on communities in the 18th century. These communities lived in a peculiar geographical context: the Shetland Islands. Without underestimating the role of the local environment in the life of the Shetlanders, this thesis shows that the surroundings of the Shetlanders were more a place of possibilities than a place of restrictions; it brought constraints, but any other surroundings in early modern Europe had its limitations. The life on the islands of Shetland was as anywhere else on mainland Scotland at the same period a life based on local resources and which saw the development of a market economy with its advantages and disadvantages for the inhabitants. In Shetland the market economy took the form of the fishing tenures with their specific share-cropping contracts.In order to understand these communities the thesis starts with how they were regulated. The regulations, the courts and their personnel all had a role to play in the social control of the members of the communities. This thesis also explores the activities of the communities’ members in their environment. Shetland as well as several regions in Northwest Europe at the same time was a place of pluriactivité, multi-tasking. Through multi-tasking and access to the commons, the scattald communities of Shetland kept a certain level of independence even in time of debt-bondage. This paradoxical relationship was rendered possible by an almost unlimited access to the commons throughout the 18th century, a time during which the movement on the commons were possible and the transmission of the memory of their boundaries stayed alive. Changes, however, happened on the islands during these times. The fishing tenures were only one element of these changes: women started to outnumber men, the size of the arable land cultivated by one household diminished, the protected commons were slowly nibbled, and a regional court offered more possibilities for justice to the higher ranks than to the tenants... Eventually, this thesis argues that local communities in 18th-century Shetland offered protection to women and men who through them had an organised support system