When Ground is Not Earth and Earth is not Ground

Keywords: outer space, settlement, decolonization, Mars, ground, colonization, indigeneity
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 11

Abstract

“Ground” is an earthly phenomenon, whether as a metaphor for seriousness or rootedness; in its material capacities to nurture growth; or in relation to its colonial manifestations as stolen territory. Indeed, “Earth” and “ground” are synonyms for one another. In this paper, however, I draw on a decade of research among entrepreneurs, scientists, and engineers who are making plans to ground human futures off Earth, in sites ranging from the surface of Mars and the moons of the outer planets to the interiors of artificially constructed, rotating, cylindrical free-space colonies. While most critical approaches to space settlement advocacy problematize its extension of grounded racialized, imperial, and capitalist relations to the cosmos, the material conditions of that-which-might-be-ground in the multiple places of outer space vary radically. I argue that this variation—not only from Earth, but also between and among these places—has consequences for what “ground” may come to do and mean in those places. With attention to Mars, I ask: (1) what kinds of material and analytic grounds are assumed by terrestrial critiques of space settlement plans for Mars in advance of its actual, grounded materialization? And (2) alternately, what grounded, decolonizing, and unsettling future imaginings emerge if, rather than rejecting these visions outright, we think through the material conditions, analytic possibilities, and political potentials of other grounded places in the cosmos?