Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper is about sex, but not the sex that people already ‘have clarity about’. ‘Outer space’ as a human, public domain is organized around sex, but a ‘sex’ that is tacitly located, and rarely spoken, in official discourse. The politics of space, as they are conceived of and practised in the US, embody a distinction between public and private (and appropriate behaviours, meanings and identities therein) that is highly dependent upon heteronormative hierarchies of property and propriety. A dominant, US-led, discourse of space is thus formed from and upon institutions, structures of understanding, and practical orientations that privilege and normalize heterosexuality as universal. As such, the dominant discursive rationalisations of space exploration and conquest (re)produce both heterosexuality as ‘unmarked’ (that is, thoroughly normalized) and the heterosexual imperatives that constitute suitable space-able people, practices and behaviours.

The central aim of this paper is to show how a dominant US discourse of technological, military and commercial superiority configures and prescribes success and successful behaviour in the politics of outer space in particularly gendered forms. US space discourse is predicated on a heteronormative discourse that (re)produces the dominance of heterosexual masculinity(ies), and which hierarchically orders the construction of other (subordinate) gender identities. As a particularly dominant discursive arrangement of outer space politics, US space discourse (re)produces meaning through the gendered assumptions of exploration, colonisation, economic endeavour and military conquest that are deeply gendered whilst presented as universal and neutral.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The US relationship with technology has a religious undertone. Greatly influenced by the epitomizing and mythic frontier experience, American statesmen, bureaucrats, and military leaders have traditionally relied upon a blind faith on technology, especially with respect to warfare technology. This blind faith has led them to steer the R & D of destructive weaponry without fully acknowledging the consequences, and where the technology was not fully grown, to believe that it would eventually catch up to fulfill the role ascribed to it in the first place. It has not been different with the Space technologies and nuclear strategy of the Cold War. The decision to develop ballistic missile defense systems and the fear of a “Space Pearl Harbor” follow the same preventive logic: outer Space is seen as being free from warfare technology and the US prepares itself not to be caught unprepared should one entity choose to develop Space weaponry and deploy warfare technology that would undermine its sovereignty and Space leadership. In reading US military Space power discourses featuring Space weaponization as an integral part of a US grand strategy of global dominance, this paper wishes to reflect on the “US religion of technology”. Long-rooted in US governmental thinking in its national historical experience, now that it is applied to Outer Space, it leads astropolitical strategists to believe that what is today impossible will eventually be technologically possible. This paper therefore addresses the US relationship with technology and pushes for a theoretical/political activism and advocacy that question the US astropolitical discourse of Space weaponization and the technological determinism that sees technology as inevitable and where society must follow the path drawn by the technology. Assuming that Space weaponization is not inevitable, it puts forth the idea that a certain technological atheism à la Virilio could and should be promoted by scholars/practitioners of international security in rebuttal of Space warriors’ nightmarish vision. In any case, it believes that a ban on Space weaponization could still very much be put on the agenda and reveal an efficient path to “peace” in Outer Space.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: World space politics is entering a dynamic and unstable period, reducing our capacities to predict future structures to nothing more than vague estimates. It is this paper's objective to sketch out and explain two major destabilizing trends - pluralisation and the (re-)emergence of space control tendencies - with far reaching structural implications. After an assessment of causes and indications of both trends the analytical focus will shift towards their political consequences, arguing that only an understanding of their interplay is likely to enhance sustainable judgements in respect to the future political order of space powers.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: New Orleans was destroyed twice: the first time by a hurricane, the second time through neoliberal forms of intervention. In this sense it also resembles Baghdad which was invaded and similarly set up for neoliberal reconstruction, This paper focuses on the aftermath of Katrina to elaborate upon New Orleans as simultaneously a space of disaster and a space of resistance from below. I have argued that resistance from below in New Orleans takes the form of what Polanyi calls 'social self-protection' (Trichur 2007). In this paper I investigate the utility of what Gramsci calls 'the Southern Question', as a framework for understanding the aftermath of Katrina.