PhD Public Lecture. October 30th, 2020. 10:30 am (EST)
Abstract:
The “Final Frontier” is the Cosmic Order of Coloniality. This cosmic order, hegemonically superior since the late 1960s, even while losing popular and political power, orders the very essence of Western space exploration, its future and possibilities. The Final Frontier is a totalizing and finalizing conception of Man and his future. Such an order reduces ways of knowing and being to colonial and capitalist modes, where all things are reduced to exploitation. In this, the future of the Final Frontier is hardly a future; it is a death march masked as salvation. While the Final Frontier as a cosmic order is one of exploitation and control, this does not mean there is no Hope for a future. It is through engagement with Cosmic Awe and Hope that humanity can move away from space as a frontier—a place to be conquered—and to space as an already existing part of the ecological system to which humanity already belongs.
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