Markus Schwarz
Abstract
This dissertation project is situated at the intersection between climate change and outer space colonization discourses. As Squire, Mould and Adey argue, corporate space colonization projects “have been set, questionably and unevenly, by these elites against a wider backdrop of planetary apocalypse.” This is visible, for instance, when the SpaceX website presents “making humanity multiplanetary” as the only viable techno-utopian solution for a planet threatened by multiple crises. The aim of this dissertation is to write against this notion and the subsequent enclosing of other utopian horizons, otherwise worlds (King et al.). In this project, I approach questions of space exploration and colonization, climate change, futurity, and the role of human and more-than-human relations in the contemporary epoch from another perspective, or quite literally: the position of the Other. Through the lens of Black and Indigenous futurisms, outer space is not conceptualized as a refuge outside planet Earth, other planets are not seen as utopian islands that just need to be reached; rather, it is the opposite: Earth is conceptualized as part of a shared cosmos. Utopia, here, is not an island which can serve as destination in the future on a linear timeline, but as a speculative archive through which to approach the present. This is not only aligned with highlighting alternative imaginaries of outer space and planet Earth, but also with unsettling the epistemology that drives works of science fiction as well as the material reality of the corporate Space Age in general. Consequently, the aim of this project is not only to argue for the presence of Black and Indigenous worlds and peoples in the future and outer space, but, more fundamentally, to expose and interrogate “the continuing ideological operations of settler-colonialism and imperialism within mainstream” (Higgins 68) science and speculative texts and discourses.
Foto: © Markus Schwarz
