Attempts to expand humanity’s presence in outer space evokes images of excitement, wonder and incredible human achievement. At the same time, our efforts to cross the ‘Final Frontier’, often evoke memories, legacies and analogies to efforts to cross other ‘frontiers’ on Earth. They call up the violence, racism and settler colonial ideologies of European Empires. In this event, we develop an interdisciplinary discussion on outer space exploration, and ask what it might mean to ‘decolonise outer space’?
In order to develop these discussions this talk features two leading experts in the study of the social and political dimensions of outer space:
Learning to Moonwalk - Sitraka Rakotoniaina
Moonwalking — as the astronaut lopes, skips, hops, and stumbles — an unchoreographed reality, infusing vitality into the magnificent desolation. What if moonwalking could transcend mere whimsy to become a critical exploration of our place in the universe?
Learning To Moonwalk is part of an ongoing research endeavour aiming to explore imaginaries as tangible spaces of investigation and infrastructure that shape societal constructs on and off planet Earth. It uses designed simulations as performances that embody the imaginary. Seeking to examine the active role of imaginaries in shaping our engagement with the unfamiliar, it also scrutinises the Material Instantiation of space exploration, their narrative embodiment and associated extraterrestrial "encounters".
More-than-planetary ethics for just space governance - Natalie Treviño
If the aspiration of space governance is to engage with the justice demands of a variety of different actors, from emerging spacefaring nations to Indigenous-led activism for the protection of dark skies, ethics and governance appear to be intimately related. However, scholarship too often remains siloed, and both space ethics and space governance suffer from a Eurocentric bias (it places European traditions and their inherent colonial legacies at its core). By conceptualizing Earth and near-Earth space (or orbit) as interconnected and inter-dynamic, this paper will take a sidestep and propose a new approach to more-than-planetary ethics.
Their interventions will be critically discussed by:
Pamela Ohene-Nyako (PhD) is a historian in international history and Black European women’s feminisms. She is the author of several articles and book chapters on the topic, as well as one of the co-editors and contributors to the book Un/Doing Race : Racialisation en Suisse (Seismo, 2022). Her research interests are Black feminisms, the history of intersectional thought and the Black European diasporas, as well as Afrofuturism and decolonial environmentalism. Besides her academic activities, Pamela is the founder of Afrolitt’, a bilingual literary and pedagogic platform that uses Black literature as a springboard for critical thought, education, and societal change.
Dr Natalie Trevino is an Interdisciplinary critical theorist of space exploration, ethics, and anti-colonial political and social theory. Her work focuses on the critique of the colonial conditions of the exploration of outer space. She is also an award winning educator, her educational philosophy is modelled after that of Paulo Freire.
Sitraka Rakotoniaina is an artist, designer and lecturer from Madagascar with an interest in speculative design and world-building. He uses designed objects, artefacts and rituals to build narratives, to probe, imagine and excite. He uses design as an exploratory tool to examine and critique dominant socio-technical imaginaries, and explore new relationships between people and technology. Currently, Sitraka is a doctoral candidate at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, where their research centres around the production of speculative cosmologies and the design of simulations as critical design practices, with a particular emphasis on postcolonial imaginaries.