Solar Accumulation: The Worlds-Systems Theory of The Expanse (original) (raw)
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The Worlds-Systems Theory of the Expanse
2019
The Syfy television series The Expanse (2015-) transposes a form of combined and uneven development from Earth to the solar system, making the human reality of life lived in space a central concern. The Expanse envisions a colonized solar system, replete with a United-Nations-controlled Terra and Luna, a military dictatorship on Mars, and a densely populated asteroid belt. This essay proposes that The Expanse offers an image of a worlds-system, by which we mean an interplanetary system of capital accumulation that reproduces the structure of twentieth-century geopoliticaleconomy at the level of the solar system. At one and the same time, The Expanse imagines a new cycle of accumulation founded in the planetary system and premised on ecological crisis on Earth and it provides a re-narration of the end of the cycle of accumulation that has been called the long twentieth century or the American century, which exasperated the climate crisis in the first instance. The Expanse is a pivota...
Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity
Daniel Duedney, Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity, 2021
Scholarly papers regarding space expansionism tend to lack an overarching perspective. To fill this gap, Daniel Deudney has penned a timely book called Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopoli- tics, and the Ends of Humanity, which makes him a pioneering scholar in laying out a holistic approach to studying space expansionism. The book provides a comprehensive analysis of both the claims of space advocates and the consequences of space activities. Additionally, it illuminates the preeminent geographic misunderstandings about space. It examines how the completed and expected space ac- tivities of space advocates and details the orbital space and technological improvements for nuclear weapons since orbital space activities could cause a devastating nuclear war.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2023
It may seem obvious that the interests of social justice should always align with environmental justice on a limited planet Earth. Unfortunately, this is far from the case in practice, even in the Anthropocene. This essay provides a new cognitive mapping of how ideology functions in the Anthropocene to address this discursive splitting of people from planet. It offers a pragmatic, semantic, and spatial analysis of how arguments for planetary protection can infelicitously turn into justifications for broadening social inequalities (and the inverse). As such, it presents an implicit critique of holist theories which would tend to minimize the importance of the critique of discourse within the Anthropocene humanities. In other words, theoretical attempts to demonstrate the fundamental unity of the social and the ecological risk leaving critics with an impoverished critical toolbox that is incapable of differentiating between transparently fraudulent greenwashing and scientifically supportable ideologies which also justify the same. This text is focused on the spatial dimension of Anthropocene ideology. It places a particular focus on the growing place and rhetorical function of outer space within the Anthropocene economy. It illustrates that the promise of extraterrestrial growth, at least when this growth is contextualized against a zoned extraterrestrial space, is emerging as a potent means of justifying inequality in the name of planetary ecology, and so also of justifying the gospel of growth despite our increasing awareness of the limits of our planet.
On Astropastoral in the Anthropocene
Ecocene, 2021
The Anthropocene is an era that owes much of its self-understanding to data obtained from space. It is also a period in which fantasies of escaping from Earth to space are proliferating. This article examines one of these fantasies-- the astropastoral dream that imagines that by going out to space we can somehow return to an idealized rural state--an ideology that we argue is contributing to keeping our society unsustainable by offering false hope for a post-planetary and more importantly post-ecological future. Yet as the article also points out, other versions of astropastoral, in particular those forms of astropastoral writing which integrate but also modify practices drawn from nature writing, can prompt us to take into consideration already threatened outer space ecosystems and can likewise contribute to helping us understand more clearly the nature, and the limits, of environmental awareness in the Anthropocene.
Is it easier to imagine the end of almost anything than the end of capitalism? The recent viral spread of the “save the economy” meme suggests that apocalyptic myths foretelling the end capitalism are now a potent force within contemporary cultural politics. This paper—a gloss of Daniel Suarez’s recent best-seller Delta-v—critically interrogates a version of this myth of capitalism’s demise. Its focus is on the ways in which anxiety towards the future of productivism is fuels problematic hopes regarding what is presented as a sustainable post-planetary economic utopia in the cosmos.
Towards Astrocriticism: Critical Theory for the Post-Planetary Condition
This essay introduces the concept, the method, and the scope of astrocriticism, a version of critical theory aimed at thinking the impacts of the growth of the new space economy. It introduces a new approach to thinking about history and space rooted in astrographic as opposed to geographic orientation, and shows ways in which the analytic approaches to the philosophy of information can be combined with continental approaches to thinking about hermeneutics within the context of an engaged critical praxis. The text also suggests how astrocriticism can be of use to scholars from a variety of disciplines and historical periods, likewise pointing out how one might situate astrocriticism with respect to existing critical theory options.
The Institute of Advanced Studies welcomes applications in response to this Call for Papers for a conference entitled 'Towards an Anthropology of Space: Orientating Cosmological Futures Conference' to be held on 18 September 2017. The deadline for applications is 22 May 2017. An epochal ‘move to space’ (Olivier 2015) has been articulated by various commentators as a crucial historical turn for all mankind, from Sputnik, through the Apollo missions to the recent realigning of NASA’s primary mission from Space Exploration to Space Settlement (Augustine Commission 2009). The effect of images of Earth from Space has produced ‘globe talk’ (Lazier 2011:606) where horizons of social worlds are now planetary in scale. These universalising rhetorics nonetheless also hide the hegemony of normative frames of reference used to define humanity’s ‘final frontier’, along with the concept of ‘humanity’ itself. David Valentine (2012) describes how Space demarks a spatial edge used to distinguish the limits of the globe, which can be both revealed and transcended by techno-science. Space exploration then, is able to act as an ‘empty signifier’ (Ibid) holding the promise of a spatial fix to the future of humanity whilst simultaneously delimiting this same future as it masks the endurance of the forms of relations it claims to transcend. As Debbora Battaglia suggests, the figure of the extra-terrestrial is a symptom of failures to critically understanding the conditions of social life (2005:9), perhaps symptomatic of an inability to conceive of an adequate ‘constitutive outside’ (Butler 1993), which is often a euphemism for a political or social ‘other’. The binary that extra-terrestrial implies may thus also be contested ethnographically. For example, Suzanne Blier (1987) has observed how dwellings of the Batammaliba track the passage of celestial ancestors through various light apertures whilst Lisa Messeri (2016) notes how Mongolian shamans have been visiting space for many years. Authors such as Alice Gorman (2005), Peter Redfield (2002) and others note how the local world of Space Centres, rocket launch sites or telescopes assume ‘translocal’, often neo-colonial, dreams (Redfield 2002:808) effacing local concerns. And whilst Soviets and Americans positioned Space as a location to enact utopian futures, different kinds of utopian ideological expansions may also occur through modern space narratives in places such as Ghana, China and Brazil. What can we make of the new space race ethnographically? How would the consideration of relations between earth and off-earth life enable a fruitful theoretical development of social science enquiry? And, ultimately, in what ways can Anthropology think through the political, the material and the transcendent dimensions of an epochal turn to Space? In this workshop we will investigate the heuristic devices used in the creation of new forms of connectedness and separation that a relation with the extra-terrestrial could enable. Please submit abstracts of 300 words for papers of 15-20 minutes in length by 22/05/2017 to Dr David Jeevendrampillai (david.jeevendrampillai.10@ucl.ac.uk) and Dr Matan Shapiro (shapirom@post.bgu.ac.il). We welcome a variety of approaches to the ‘move to space’ but particularly welcome those which consider the theological/cosmological, the material and bodily, and the political. Initially we plan to have three sessions along these lines with a senior respondent in each and a roundtable at the end of the day. We aim to work the papers into a special issue journal.
Comparative visions of cosmic expansion: implications for sustainability
Journal of Sustainable Tourism
The visions of the primary protagonists of the development of outer space diverge in terms of both their motives for and means of extending life into the cosmos. The present article analyses the implications for sustainability associated with the visions of three prominent entitiesthe National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the 'space entrepreneurs' who lead the private spaceflight industry (such as Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and Jeff Bezos), and transhumanists. This latter category aims to accelerate evolutionary processes to transform humans into a new 'posthuman' species which will be imbued with a greatly extended lifespan and other capabilities that enhance survivability in outer space. Due to the inchoate nature of safer and more affordable spaceflight, it is currently unclear which vision of space development will come to fruition. As explored in this article, the proposals advocated by NASA, space entrepreneurs, and transhumanists are associated with divergent implications for sustainability. Trade-off decisions must be made in terms of whether to minimise impacts on Earth, other celestial bodies, or the human form. While it is currently unclear which vision will eventuate, the process of space exploration and settlement is poised to considerably alter current conceptualisations of sustainability.