A Cosmopolitics of Outer Space

• In Event: Science, Technology and Society in Outer Space - I

Abstract

Outer space is a domain of human experience and knowledge production that is constantly transforming how we understand life on Earth. New institutions, industries and technologies are currently changing the way Low Earth Orbit, the Moon and Mars are imagined, reached and used for scientific, economic and national interest purposes. This paper offers an introduction to the field of STS research on Outer Space and the papers in this panel, by reflecting critically on multiple complex dimensions of emerging understandings of outer space and of space on Earth. The paper outlines what a space-inclusive STS might look like in examining how outer space is co-produced as an object of knowledge within intersecting socio-technical imaginaries; is a site for problematizing and speculating about future modes of existence on this planet; and is a platform to theorize co-emerging socio-natures from terrestrial analogue sites to planetary environments beyond Earth. Offering critical angle on how space is being known and produced through diverse knowledges, and performed through a range cultural practices within a broad ecology of practices, the paper asks what approaches can we take to illuminate a novel cosmopolitics of outer space, that is attentive to how things, organisms, devices, discourses, practices, generate realities and provide a sense of what counts, and what is valuable and known in relation to outer space.

Author

• Juan Francisco Salazar, Western Sydney University