Making Mars: The Emergence of a Resources-Territory Areopolitics

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ABSTRACT Human activities are territorialising and commodifying Mars. Areopolitically reexploring the planet is a pressing necessity as outer space actors have increasingly been operating there for several decades, intensifying thus the interaction. This paper argues that territory and resources are being made on the basis of a novel theoretical framework in the involved sub-fields of geography that it formalises, utilises, and advances: the resources-state-territory nexus and, more specifically, the resources-territory sub-nexus. The unprecedented application of a nexus thinking on areopolitics allows to analyse both sectors simultaneously. This study is informed by the Foucauldian apparatus and is grounded in the conceptual breakthroughs of object-oriented ontology. The discourses and materials, actually conceivable as objects, of the Martian endeavour are that way critically investigated to uncover the dynamics of the nexus. It results that areometrics not only creates territory but influences the creation of resources and, parallelly, that commodity frontiers not only create resources but influence the creation of territory. This interdependence is the core of the sub-nexus. Besides, the exclusive robotic mediation of the relationship with the Red Planet calls for an examination of its implications. Pointing out probe-power further brings to light the bonds between the territorial sub-elements, terrain and land, and resources through the stress it exercises on these interconnections. It also strengthens territory by creating a bridge between its constitutive sub-elements. Hence, the terrain- and land-resources bonds prove to be more substantial than the main sub-nexus, which renders the questions of territory and resources even more inseparable.