Race, Space, and the Space Race

Keywords: critical race theory, colonialism, spatial fix, technoscience, Mars
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 37

Abstract

This paper will suggest an extraterrestrial turn for critical race thinking by understanding plans for the humanization of outer space not merely as an intensification of racial capitalism but an absurdification of the scientific colonial spirit. What Harvey calls the "spatial fixing" of capital - the competition to invest in land, infrastructure, and leisure projects as older industries become unprofitable - is exemplified in today’s various commercial space ventures. However, the professed utilitarian impetus in technoscience is belied at every turn of the plans for extending the human habitat beyond Earth, and profitability alone cannot explain the elaborate fantasies involved. Understanding colonialism, empire, and the concomitant differentiation of the human species into racial groups requires psychoanalyzing the pull factors of the unknown and the outside. Rather than denounce the preposterous unworkability of restarting civilization on Mars, for instance, the question is what it is lurking within the extreme alterity of another planet that invites certain humans to devote their fortunes, labor, and equations to getting there rather than to Earth’s crises. The argument is that what drives the space race more than scientificity and military strategy is a more basic desire for territorialization and predictability paradoxically fuelled by the strongest deterritorialization possible. The paper concludes with some of Guattari’s thoughts on the computerization of social identities running through his science-fiction screenplay A Love of UIQ.