IAS Talking Points: Towards an Anthropology of Space - Orientating cosmological futures

Anthropologically speaking, a focus on Outer Space raises many interesting questions, brought about by the epochal 'move to space' (Olivier, 2015) which has been articulated by various commentators as a crucial historical turn for all humankind. In this talk, Institute of Advanced Studies Junior Research Fellow, Dr David Jeevendrampillai will talk about how images of Earth from Space has produced 'globe talk' (Lazier, 2011: 606), where horizons of social worlds are now planetary in scale. Universalising rhetoric nonetheless also hides the hegemony of normative frames of reference used to define humanity's 'final frontier', along with the concept of 'humanity' itself. Tracing the history of earth imagery, Jeevendrampillai will ask as to the consequences of such earth imaginaries for emergent forms of cosmopolitan citizenship. Whilst such ruminations have occurred in philosophy and other social sciences, Jeevendrampillai will end the talk by talking about how such articulations of human beings' cosmological relation to Outer Space is implicated at particular sites of space science in relation to other ways of being human.

Respondents: Dr Joy Sleeman, Reader in Art History and Theory, Slade School of Fine Art, UCL and Dr Jill Stuart, Visiting Research Fellow, Department of Government, LSE

All welcome.

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