Unfolding the Space Between Stars: Anthropology of the Interstellar

Abstract

In this anthropological account of the “interstellar” – the vast expanses of outer space between the stars – I take interstellar travel as an object of ethnographic study. First, I examine three interstellar space projects: NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft; 100 Year Starship’s manifesto on their quest to travel to another star; and SETI’s search for life in the universe. Finally, I turn to corresponding examples of interstellar travel in speculative fiction.In 2013, NASA announced a transmission from the Voyager 1 spacecraft as the “sound of interstellar space” and marked it as crossing a boundary into the “space between stars.” Organizations like 100 Year Starship and the Interstellar Message Composition program at SETI describe interstellar travel in terms of spacecraft, listening for signals, and active transmission. Fiction and science also co-render humans into interstellar scale via speculative technologies like artificial intelligence, instantaneous travel across the universe by “folding space,” and the “generation ship,” in which generations of crewmembers live and die during a multi-year voyage to another star.This ethnography of interstellar ontologies across multiple sites and scales builds on feminist science studies (Haraway), recent work on abstractions as scientific things (Helmreich), and the concept of hyperobjects – non-human entities that are massively distributed in time and space (Morton). As interstellar space moves between abstraction, text, place, and object, I find that it unfolds to reveal a constellation of potentially inhabited worlds inscribed by both scientists and speculative fiction; what was remote, insensate, and desolate becomes intimate, poetic, inhabited.Keywords: Science; Speculative Fiction; Object-Oriented Ontology; Deconstruction; SpacePlease cite as:Oman-Reagan, Michael P. 2015. “Unfolding the Space Between Stars: Anthropology of the Interstellar.” SocArXiv, Open Science Framework. Manuscript, submitted February 4, 2017. osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/r4ghb/A version of this paper was presented as:Oman-Reagan, Michael P. 2015. Unfolding the Space Between Stars: Anthropology of the Interstellar. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Denver, November 21.

Strange Aeons: Transhumanism, H.P. Lovecraft, and the affective index of posthuman dread

“…Faced with these issues, some anthropologists have suggested that we turn to speculative fiction—and, specifically, science fiction, as a way of modelling the kinds of ‘extrapolations, intensifications, and mutations’ (Wolf‐Meyers, 2019, p. 19) that we might expect (see similarly Collins, 2021). 2 Such a turn allows for the thinking of scales and gulfs that are otherwise beyond anthropological ken (see Oman‐Reagan, 2015). It certainly has an appeal in a ‘scenario planning’ (Faubion, 2016) sort of way.…”

Conceptualizing Difference in SETI: Xenoanthropological Theory and Methods

“…An ontological approach challenges dualist distinctions to suggest there are not only different world views, but may be different worlds. Such conceptual shifts are helpful as we attempt to imagine and relate to an ETI experience of the universe in which "the world" may look, feel, and act entirely different due to differences in biology, mind, or culture [31]. Recent anthropology also offers "extraterrestrial relativism" [17] and other non-anthropocentric ways of thinking about existence through different natures, minds, and experiences.…”

Visions of Human Futures in Space and SETI

“…Historian of science Colin Milburn makes a compelling argument that science fiction can function as a "repository of modifiable futures" in science (Milburn, 2010). Some science fiction thus provides opportunities for fruitful speculation about extraterrestrial intelligence beyond classic anthropocentric assumptions and helps us to think about alternative possible futures (Collins, 2008;Oman-Reagan, 2015b). The "exercise of imagination," Ursula K. Le Guin reminds us, "has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary" (Le Guin, 2004).…”