Astroculture Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

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- History, Intellectual History, Philosophy, Classics

Militarizing Outer Space explores the dystopian and destructive dimensions of the Space Age and challenges conventional narratives of a bipolar Cold War rivalry. Concentrating on weapons, warfare and violence, this provocative volume examines real and imagined endeavors of arming the skies and conquering the heavens. The third and final volume in the groundbreaking European Astroculture trilogy, Militarizing Outer Space zooms in on the interplay between security, technopolitics and knowledge from the 1920s through the 1980s. Often hailed as the site of heavenly utopias and otherworldly salvation, outer space transformed from a promised sanctuary to a present threat, where the battles of the future were to be waged. Astroculture proved instrumental in fathoming forms and functions of warfare’s futures past, both on earth and in space. The allure of dominating outer space, the book shows, was neither limited to the early twenty-first century nor to current American space force rhetorics.

- by Alexander C . T . Geppert and +1
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- European History, Military History, History of Technology, Cold War and Culture

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.

With and against Carl Schmitt, the thesis of a third space revolution is developed - the space revolution through space travel and the corresponding taking of space. Based on this, the connection with globalisation is reconstructed and the significance of space travel for the constitution of world society in the sense of Niklas Luhmann's sociology is discussed.

- by Dierk Spreen
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- Political Sociology, Sociology of Space, Carl Schmitt, Niklas Luhmann

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.

- by Brad Tabas
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- Science Fiction, Mars, Environmental Humanities, Utopia and Science Fiction

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.

Beginning in 1947, with the first waves of UFO sightings, and continuing in the subsequent decades, debates on the existence and gestalt of extraterrestrial life gained unprecedented prominence. Initially an American phenomenon, flying saucer reports quickly became global in scope. Contemporaneous with efforts to legitimize the possibility of spaceflight in the years before Sputnik, the UFO phenomenon generated as much sensation in Europe as in the USA. In the public imagination, UFOs were frequently conflated with technoscientific approaches to space exploration. As innumerable reports of sightings led to a transnational movement driven by both proponents and critics, controversial protagonists such as ‘contactee’ George Adamski became prominent media celebrities. Incipient space experts including Willy Ley, Arthur C. Clarke, and Wernher von Braun sought to debunk what they considered a great swindle, or, following C.G. Jung, a modern myth evolving in real-time. Yet they failed to develop a response to the epistemic-ontological challenge posed by one wave of UFO sightings after another. Studying a phenomenon whose very existence has been non-consensual since its genesis presents a particular challenge for historians. Posing complex questions of fact and fiction, knowing and believing, and science and religion, this article analyzes the postwar UFO phenomenon as part of a broader astroculture and identifies transcendental and occult traditions within imagined encounters with extraterrestrial beings.

After the Apollo moon landings, disillusionment set in. With the return of the last astronaut in 1972, the skies – rather than the distant stars – once again became the limit. No longer considered the inevitable destination of infinite human expansion, outer space lost much of the popular appeal, cultural significance and political urgency that it had gained since the end of the Second World War. With the rapid waning of the worldwide Apollo frenzy, the optimism of the Space Age gave way to an era of planetized limits and space fatigue. Bringing together the history of European astroculture and American-Soviet spaceflight with recent scholarship on the 'long 1970s,' the thirteen chapters in this cutting-edge volume examine this period of transition and reconfiguration from a multiplicity of disciplinary perspectives. Rather than invoking oft-repeated narratives of a bipolar Cold War rivalry and an escalating Space Race, Limiting Outer Space breaks fascinating new ground by exploring a hitherto underrated and understudied decade, the Post-Apollo period.

If space exploration is understood as not just one of the twentieth century’s most prestigious feats of engineering, but also a central theme in period visions of the future and utopias, then how might we understand the transition from the 1960s to the 1970s, with its emphasis on reduced possibilities and limitations to progress? The conference aimed to shift the focus away from explanations of transition from Cold War contexts and produce more nuanced narratives: from the familiar struggle between two superpowers, namely the USA and the former USSR, to distinctly West-European perspectives, and from political to socio-cultural dimensions of the Space Age. How were limits created, challenged and maintained? And in what sense was outer space invoked to transform cultural boundaries and how were these conveyed to different audiences? The conference looked at utopia not as a socio-cultural objective but rather as a process. Through defining limitless opportunities afforded by outer space, advocates of space exploration not only opened up new possibilities for accelerating or even surpassing human development, but also delineated the historicity and limitations of the imagination.

- by Daniel Brandau
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- European History, Cold War, History of Space Travel, Spaceflight

El presente artículo examina un nuevo concepto surgido recientemente a partir de las aportaciones del historiador alemán Alexander C.T. Geppert, para quien una serie de elementos culturales hetereogéneos, pero relacionados con la Era Espacial, pueden agruparse en un único ámbito de estudio histórico, que él denomina astrocultura. Después de repasar las vinculaciones tradicionales de la carrera espacial con la ufología, se analiza de qué manera ésta puede llegar a quedar insertada dentro de la astrocultura, y las consecuencias que de ello se derivarían.
//This article examines a new concept that has recently emerged from the contributions of the German historian Alexander C.T. Geppert, for whom a series of hetereogeneous cultural elements, but related to the Space Age, can be grouped into a single field of historical study, which he calls Astroculture. After reviewing the traditional links between the Space Race and ufology, the paper analyzes how the latter can be inserted into Astroculture, and the consequences that would follow.

Das Themenheft 'Berliner Welträume im frühen 20. Jahrhundert' untersucht Genese und Gestalt technischer Weltraumvisionen. Es fragt nach der Entstehung, Verbreitung und Resonanz von Astrokultur und Raumfahrtbegeisterung vor dem sogenannten Weltraumzeitalter, dessen Beginn für gewöhnlich auf den Start des ersten künstlichen Satelliten am 4. Oktober 1957 datiert wird. Am Beispiel des Wissenschaftlichen Theaters der 1889 eröffneten Urania (Jana Bruggmann), des seit 1926 bestehenden Planetariums im Zoologischen Garten (Katherine Boyce-Jacino) sowie des 1930 begründeten „Raketenflugplatzes“ in Tegel (Tilmann Siebeneichner) werden Formen und Funktion von Astrokultur im lokalhistorischen Kontext untersucht. Indem dieses Heft auf drei Produktionsorte ‚früher‘ Weltraumvisionen zwischen den 1880er Jahren und dem Ende des Weimarer Raketenfiebers fokussiert, verräumlicht es die Geschichte des Weltraums auf doppelte Weise. Einerseits werden die dort entworfenen und propagierten Welträume rekonstruiert, miteinander verglichen und auf ihre unterschiedlichen Charakteristika im technikhistorischen Kontext hin befragt. Andererseits werden die Orte des Weltraumdenkens in der Metropole lokalisiert, topographisch zueinander in Bezug gesetzt und in ihrer soziokulturellen Bedeutung für das Berliner Weichbild untersucht.

This paper attempts to critically re-construct the vision of the future of the subject animating the data capitalists driving Space 2.0. The conclusions are as follows: The New Space understanding of the humankind that will go to space is different from past astrofuturisms. In these astrofuturisms the fantasy was that some future humankind would dwell beyond the Earth, and these beings were cognitively human—if not necessarily physically so. But Space 2.0 emerges when the human intellect is accepted to have no future. Astrofuturism 2.0 is thus equivalent to accepting the death of the subjects of previous astrofuturisms. It is a product of the belief that we will become beings capable of colonizing the cosmos precisely when we accept to sacrifice the human subject and its cognitive limits in favor of a hyperintelligent form of post-consciousness attained by uploading our minds onto our computers and so re-engineering our cognitive architecture. It traces this newfound willingness to sacrifice of the human forms of experience to a collective failure to properly imagine and understand how the radical new relation to space initiated by the Space Age has shaped the constitution of the subject and its desires in the uncanny epoch that we call the Anthropocene.

- by Brad Tabas
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- Critical Theory, Ethics, Space and Place, Utopian Studies
- by Alexander C . T . Geppert
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- Sound, Spaceflight, Sonic Studies, Outer Space History

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.

- by Brad Tabas
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- Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Epistemology, Science Fiction

Taking as its starting point the emergence of expansive capitalism thanks to the efforts and investments of multi-billionaires, this essay argues for a reframing of how we think historically about outer space. It suggests that by reframing space history from a focus on human exploration to an emphasis on the data that we receive back from space from remote sensing technologies, we can come to an enriched understanding of the culture of the present age. It particularly places emphasis on the idea that the global information age and the Anthropocene ought to be understood as astroculture, showing that they are historical products of a data-driven human relationship with extraterrestrial places. The value of this new way of seeing ourselves as astrocultural subjects—as beings whose history is already entangled with outer space even if we still live on planet Earth—is that it helps us to better understand and resist the environmental risks and social inequalities that accompany the expansion of capitalism out beyond the Earth.

- by Brad Tabas
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- Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Globalization, Sustainable Development

Der Weltraum war nicht immer da, sondern ist ein Produkt des 20. Jahrhunderts. Lange vor dem Kalten Krieg entstand im Wechselspiel von Astrokultur, Zukunftsdenken und Raumfahrttechnik ein Imaginationsraum, der bis heute als... more

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.

- by Alexander C . T . Geppert
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- Cold War and Culture, Human Spaceflight, Spaceflight, 1970s Culture

Over the last decades environmentally engaged literary critics and historians have begun to embrace a characterization of our current age as planetary. This essay presents a somewhat contrary view. It argues that to fully appreciate the gravity of our current situation we must also attend to what lies beyond the planet, acknowledging the degree to which our current scientific understanding of the Earth comes from extraterrestrial remote sensing technologies, and so historically is a product of the Space Age. Drawing on this insight, and in light of the increasing degradation of near space environments as a result of New Space capitalism, it argues that the Anthropocene ought to be re-framed in extra-planetary terms so as to include anthropogenic environmental degradation taking place on planet Earth but also beyond the limits of the atmosphere. Embracing the Anthropocene as post-planetary involves shifting consciousness and care outwards to include the extended critical zone of the impact of our artifices as opposed to limiting this environmental consciousness to the natural limits of our planet and its atmosphere.

- by Brad Tabas
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- Critical Theory, History, Planetary Science, Environmental Humanities

In this chapter I present the way 20th century outer space visualizations generate an agreeable terror in the audience. As proposed by Edmund Burke, whatever is terrifying is also sublime, thus many space artists strived to evoke fear and awe through depicting aesthetically pleasing, yet horrifying visions. The study, conducted on the basis of a visual content analysis, examines a representative selection of over one hundred and fifty space art works, pervading a variety of media, including popular science and general interest magazines, art books, science fiction novels or the film industry. It is grounded in the theory of terror which allows me to investigate its various manifestations, defined as a sense of anticipation and dread which precedes the horrifying experience. As suggested by Stephen King in his non-fiction Danse Macabre, terror remains the finest emotion, distinct from that of horror and revulsion, and at the same the hardest to induce both in the reader and the viewer. My research has revealed that, akin to American landscape movement of the 1800s, most visuals utilize the category of gigantism to intimidate the audience as well as to arouse piety and wonder. On the other hand, some artists, mostly the Russian illustrators, convey horror by portraying the grandeur and beauty of the universe by the use of romantic images, symbolism and surrealism. Also, I will argue that visualizing unexplored, vast and to a large extent empty cosmic landscapes surrounded by endless, infinite spaces is crucial in creating such an impression in the audience. Aesthetic qualities of untamed and otherworldly nature veiled in darkness reinforce the effect of the sublime, emphasizing a sense of mystery, drama and excitement.

- by Kornelia Boczkowska
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- Space Exploration, Astroculture, Space Art, Astronomical Art

In this paper I discuss a visual representation of semiotic unity as contained in the works of selected American and Soviet space artists who, in the late 1980s, carried out a joint cultural and educational mission. This enterprise began in 1987, when seven members of the International Association of Astronomical Artists (IAAA) were invited to Moscow to attend the Space Future Forum and participate in an art exhibition, organized by the USSR Academy of Sciences in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of Sputnik. A strict cooperation began in 1987, when the Planetary Society initiated a joint venture between the U.S. and Russian astronomical artists by inviting the Soviet Cosmic Group to take part in an international series of workshops and exhibitions, organized by IAAA between 1988 and 1990 (Hartmann et al., 1990, p. 12-15). The meetings resulted in a set of works, most of which were exhibited and later included in the Soviet-American space art book, In the Stream of Stars, edited by William K. Hartmann, Ron Miller, Andrei Sokolov and Vitali Myagkov (1990). Some of them, here under investigation, contain a visual representation of unity whose semiotic construction reveals a new cultural and educational message to the humanity. Interestingly, the analysis of certain connotative meanings has suggested a strong employment of symbolism in the first and second order of signification which clearly signifies some novel challenges that the human being needs to face toward the beginning of the new millennium. Also since that time, the genre of space art, so far mostly synonymous with astronomical paintings, has much extended the boundaries of visual representation. This might have been inspired both by the international cooperation as well as a changing socio-political scene which required a more peaceful and humanitarian approach to space research and exploration.

Through the twentieth century, the continual exploration of outer space and its imaginary colonization in science and fiction has led to a new understanding of the space-time continuum. While the physical space surrounding planet Earth was conceptualized ever more precisely, the encounter with the immensity of time has provoked less resonance. This article analyzes the temporal dimension of the Age of Space in three steps. First, it juxtaposes various ways of conceptualizing the so-called Space Age as a significant period in human history. Second, it examines orders of time inherent in West-European space thought, in particular the widespread appeal of time dilatation as seen in Eugen Sänger’s popular 1950s photon rocket scenario. Third, it charts the experience of time on board spaceships, as detailed in astronauts’ autobiographies. This article argues that the appeal of the Space Age lay not only in the promise of continued physical expansion but also in the total control over the fourth dimension envisioned for the future.

This article examines a new concept that has recently emerged from the contributions of the German historian Alexander C.T. Geppert, for whom a series of hetereogeneous cultural elements, but related to the Space Age, can be grouped into a single field of historical study, which he calls Astroculture. After reviewing the traditional links between the Space Race and ufology, the paper analyzes how the latter can be inserted into Astroculture, and the consequences that would follow.

The objective of this paper is to think through post-naturalism about catastrophes. This is the idea that natural catastrophes—floods, droughts, crop failures, pandemics—are now, in the Anthropocene, unnatural catastrophes. To do this we discuss post-naturalism from a peculiar point of view: the exception and the extreme as manifested in the form of massive cosmic bodies striking the Earth. Our conclusion is that only a post-planetary eco-criticism, one that thinks about the planet within the larger context of our solar system and our technosphere, can uphold the general thrust of the recent wave of post-naturalism in eco-criticism in the face of the irrefutable existence of extra-planetary realities and risks which renders all claims to live in a post-natural world-- at least when taken at face value-- absurd.

- by Brad Tabas
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- History of Space Travel, Science Fiction, Eco-criticism, Anthropocene

In response to the rise of interest in the notion of the planetary among environmental historians and philosophers, and likewise reacting to the current wave of interest in returning to space and the proclaimed birth of Space 2.0, this essay considers the somewhat provocative question as to whether we have indeed ever been planetary. The answer that we offer is no. We support this claim based on historical considerations on the inseparability of our current understanding of the planet with the human expansion into outer space. Stated rather more precisely, but also somewhat paradoxically: humankind only became aware of itself as a planetary species by becoming a post-planetary species. Our argument then is that the current rhetoric proclaiming that we live in a planetary age needs to be revised to take into account the extra-planetary dimension in our supposedly planetary existence. The remainder of the essay attempts to rapidly sketch what it might mean to begin to think critically about our current historical situation in post-planetary terms, with a particular focus on culture, ecology, economics, and politics.

- by Brad Tabas
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- Environmental Philosophy, Environmental History, Philosophy of History, Space 2.0

Space plays a role in modernity and in modern society. It is by no means an external space that is merely "there" and simply "surrounds" earthly events. Rather, it proves to be, firstly, a model for social self-reference free from the intervention of the state sovereign, which goes hand in hand with anti-dualistic body-soul concepts. Secondly, it is conceived as a free space that challenges the construction of fully technical spheres and thus enables an astronautical way of life for humans. At the same time, astronautical existence also makes the form of a space-optimised technical reconstruction of the human body conceivable. This optimisation is addressed by the term "cybernetic organism" or "cyborg". And thirdly, the "spaceship" and the "cyborg" become reflexive figures that can be used to problematise the interactions between nature, life, society and technology.

- by Dierk Spreen
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- Cyborg Theory, History of Space Travel, Optimization techniques, Sociology of Space

Discussions of sustainable development often speak of the importance of cultural change for sustainable development. This text seeks to problematize the idea of cultural change in the name of sustainable development by pointing out the ways in which even in the present moment there exist two cultures of sustainable development: the developmentalists and the sustainabilists, those that believe that growth is compatible with development and those that do not. We argue that even if, and especially if, humankind is able to develop more sustainably, the age of sustainable development will be marked by an existential struggle between developmentalists and sustainabilists that risks bringing to an end the very category of the human itself.

- by Brad Tabas
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- Cultural Studies, Environmental History, Sustainable Development, Singularity Theory
- by Alexander C . T . Geppert
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- European History, History of Space Travel, Human Spaceflight, UFOlogy
- by Norman Aselmeyer
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- Cultural History, Contemporary History, Astroculture
- by Alexander C . T . Geppert
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- Film Studies, Human Spaceflight, Science Fiction Film, Spaceflight