L’astroculture européenne, terrain de recherche. Entretien avec Alexander Geppert (original) (raw)
Related papers
Imagining Outer Space: European Astroculture in the Twentieth Century
2018
Imagining Outer Space makes a captivating advance into the cultural history of outer space and extraterrestrial life in the European imagination. How was outer space conceived and communicated? What promises of interplanetary expansion and cosmic colonization propelled the project of human spaceflight to the forefront of twentieth-century modernity? In what way has West-European astroculture been affected by the continuous exploration of outer space? Tracing the current thriving interest in spatiality to early attempts at exploring imaginary worlds beyond our own, the book analyzes contact points between science and fiction from a transdisciplinary perspective and examines sites and situations where utopian images and futuristic technologies contributed to the omnipresence of fantasmatic thought. Bringing together state-of-the-art work in this emerging field of historical research, Imagining Outer Space breaks new ground in the historicization of the Space Age.
European Astrofuturism, Cosmic Provincialism: Historicizing the Space Age
Alexander C.T. Geppert (ed.): Imagining Outer Space: European Astroculture in the Twentieth Century, 2012
Ubiquitous, limitless and ever-expanding as it may be, outer space has a history too. Although it is virtually impossible to experience outer space in a direct, unmediated manner, historians can study how it was represented, communicated and perceived. In addition to presenting the core questions that drive the Imagining Outer Space volume this chapter introduces the umbrella concept of ‘astroculture,’ discusses the necessity to ‘Europeanize’ space history and suggests to regard ‘science fiction’ and ‘science fact’ as complementary rather than contradictory. The article also draws attention to two further characteristics of twentieth-century astroculture, that is its futuristic, often explicitly utopian strand as well as a strong transcendental, if not outspokenly religious undercurrent.
FINAL PROGRAM SUMMER COURSE ON CULTURAL ASTRONOMIES IN EUROPE, JULY 2023
An overview of the topic since its emergence with a discussion of its definition and implications 1. GENERAL DATA Organization: Polish Academy of Sciences (Warsaw) in association with the Centro Interuniversitário de História das Ciências e da Tecnologia (Lisbon) and the University of Wales Trinity Saint David (Swansea), intended for postgraduate students, university faculty, researchers, and independent scholars. Sponsored by PERIPHERIES-Minority Cultures on the Periphery of Science: The Jews and the Circulation of Scientific Goods (funded by the European Union Horizon 2020 under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 847639).
What Is, and To What End Do We Study, European Astroculture?
Militarizing Outer Space: Astroculture, Dystopia and the Cold War, 2021
Militarizing Outer Space is the final volume in the European Astroculture trilogy. This epilogue discusses the successful establishment of astroculture as a field of modern (European) historiography and suggests three new perspectives for further research on global astroculture and the making of our planetized present.
2014
Astroculture is a testament to the literary imagination and theoretical innovation of the late Sonja A.J. Neef, who devised the term as an expanding horizon of collaborative research—into the powerful gravitational force exerted on culture by astronomical phenomena and imagery. It is also the name of a conference on the topic inspired by Neef and held at the Center for Advanced Studies Morphomata at the University of Cologne in November, 2011. Indeed, Astroculture is a perfect instance of a morphome, the overall target of the Cologne College’s ongoing symposia: a persistent trope or topos of cultural fascination and transcription appearing across a gamut of civilizations and historical periods. Commentary in this volume ranges from Claudius Ptolemy’s mapping of the universe and the emergence of a pluralistic cosmology in seventeenth-century Europe to the spread of planetariums, the Whole Earth Catalog, and the contemporary artwork of Ingo Günter. With interventions by David Aubin, Lucía Ayala, Monika Bernold, Dietrich Boschung, Bruce Clarke, Gerd Graßhoff, Hans-Christian von Hermann, Martina Leeker, Patricia Pisters, and Henry Sussman.
Space Personae: Cosmopolitan Networks of Peripheral Knowledge, 1927–1957
How has European astrofuturism developed into a central element of Western modernity? Focusing on the activities of the early spaceflight movement, in particular key protagonists Willy Ley (1906-1969) and Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008), this article analzyes the making of a cosmopolitan space international before and after the Second World War. While transnational networks of small amateur groups were well established in the 1930s, it was only in the 1950s that the authority of the space expert was publically acknowledged, laying the foundation of the 'rocket scientist'-myth in popular culture. To increase societal acceptability activists had undergone a self-imposed process of intellectual streamlining. However, that their success in writing fiction out of science had come at a price became obvious when they proved unable to respond to the epistemological challenge presented by the first waves of UFO sightings. Such questions of agency deserve a much more radical and comprehensive treatment than they have hitherto received if the societal impact of outer space is to be adequately historicized and integrated into mainstream cultural historiography. Personae des Weltraums: Kosmopolitische Netzwerke peripheren Wissens, 1927–1957 Wie hat sich der europäische Astrofuturismus zu einem Kernelement westlicher Modernität entwickelt? Anhand der Aktivitäten zweier Protagonisten der frühen Raumfahrt-Bewegung, Willy Ley (1906–1969) und Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008), zeichnet der Aufsatz die Genese einer kosmopolitischen Internationale des Weltraums vor und nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg nach. Während transnationale Netzwerke kleinerer Amateurgruppen bereits in den 1930er Jahren existierten, wurde die Autorität des Weltraum-Experten von einer breiteren Öffentlichkeit erst in den 1950er Jahren anerkannt und zugleich die Grundlage des ‹Raketenwissenschaftler-Mythos› in der Populärkultur geschaffen. Indem sie zur Überwindung ihres soziokulturellen Außenseiterstatus ‹fiction› aus ‹science› herauszuschreiben suchten, unterzogen sich diese Experten erfolgreich einem Prozess intellektueller Selbstbeschränkung, erwiesen sich jedoch letztlich nicht in der Lage, eine Antwort auf die epistemologische Herausforderung der ersten UFO-Sichtungen zu formulieren. Wenn es gilt, die Geschichte des Weltraums in den Mainstream der allgemeinen Geschichte zu integrieren, müssen solche Fragen von ‹agency› sehr viel radikaler gestellt werden als dies bislang der Fall ist. Personae de l’univers: Des réseaux cosmopolites de savoir périphérique 1927–1957 Comment l’astrofuturisme s’est-il transformé en un élément central de la modernité occidentale ? A partir des activités de deux protagonistes des débuts du mouvement aérospatial, Willy Ley (1906–1969) et Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008), cet article dessine la genèse d’une cosmopolite internationale de l’univers avant et après la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Pendant que des réseaux transnationaux de petits groupes d’amateurs étaient bien établis dans les années 1930, l’autorité d’expert aérospatial n’était reconnu officiellement qu’aux années 1950 et parallèlement la base du mythe du ‹roquette-scientist› était construit dans la culture populaire. Afin d’accroître l’acceptation sociale, les activistes avait entrepris un procès intellectuel de rationalisation, qu’ils s’étaient imposés eux-mêmes, en séparant la ‹fiction› de la ‹science›. Cependant, ce succès n’offrait pas de réponse au défit épistémologique présenté par les premières vues d’ovnis. Pour intégrer l’histoire de l’univers dans l’histoire générale, ces questions d’‹agency› doit être prononcées avec plus de fermeté que c’était le cas jusqu’à présent.