Beyond the geo
I’m leaving the planet – conceptually speaking. Work going forward focuses on space, the exo, post-planetarity and the post-human. Rather than being the ‘final frontier’, space and the cosmic look to open up new conceptions of ourselves – the human – and co-existential being.
Beyond the geo: otherworldly places, planets, natures
Institute of Australian Geographers Conference 2023, Perth, Australia, July 2023
In this paper I present ideas in development. These follow previous work couched in environmental and geo humanities, specifically grappling with what I framed as Anthropocene or planetary dwelling – coming to terms with the challenges of living on a dynamic and changing planet. Of course Anthropocene ideas have usefully helped bring focus to the geo – planetary life, systems, agencies and temporalities – and the ways in which humans engage with these both knowingly and unknowingly.
With this work I seek to move beyond the geo and follow cultural geographer Denis Cosgrove’s (2000) call to consider the extraterrestrial and cosmological. Such a move I suggest is highly pertinent in light of renewed human interests in spaces and life beyond the geo, but relevant to contemporary social thought focusing on conditions of planetarity, of sociality, of the more-than-human and co-existential.
Put simply, exo-planetary activities and discoveries will fundamentally impact our understanding of the human and will compel world-view renarration across a more expansive cosmic and meta-physical existence.
Denis Cosgrove’s almost-25-year-old call for an “extra-terrestrial geographies” was more than just a concern for mapping the landscapes of outer-spaces or exo-political entanglements. This was also a summons for a rethinking of human cosmological connection.
For his argument, Cosgrove returns to 19th century explorer, naturalist and geographer, Alexander von Humboldt’s magnum opus ‘Kosmos’ – a five-volume series seeking to capture and represent the combined order and beauty - the “Harmony” - of the natural world. Importantly, for von Humboldt, all natural, cultural, and social phenomena were interrelated and should be studied as a whole – it was only through a intimate dance of world and mind that the cosmos came into being.
The purpose of cosmography in a pre-secular age was ethical; it concerned the place of human life in an ordered creation. However, even by the time of Cosmos’s publication – the final decades of von Humbolt’s life during the mid-1800s – ideas of an orderly world (akin to a Divine Order) were no longer a respectable scientific concept, and subsequently became deeply distrusted in the social sciences and humanities.
Cultural geography, Cosgrove reminds us, has been engaged in an intensive rethinking of the meanings of place and human experience, exploring critically the Heideggerian themes of dwelling, attachment and rootedness. The tensions between these themes and those of cosmopolitanism - the consciousness of belonging to a more diverse, complex and global space, created and sustained by social connections - are central to the theoretical concerns of cultural geographers in a globalising world.
More poetically Cosgrove reminds us that to lose a sense of the heavens is to lose also that of earth. Both spheres are inseparably connected to human existence.
Since Cosgrove’s 2000 paper, a modicum of work in cultural geography has taken interest with space though has focused mostly on politics and representation. This includes topics such as critical geopolitics, or ‘critical astropolitics’, interrogating terrestrial power relations embedded in spaceflight industries (Warf, 2007; Collis, 2009; Beery, 2012), space-promoting organisations (MacDonald, 2007; Dunnett, 2017), and outer space in popular culture (MacDonald, 2008). The concept of "environment" has also been expanded to include Mars (Lane, 2011; Dittmer, 2007), and analysis undertaken of imagery and exploration narratives echoing a kind of frontier expansionism (Sage, 2014; MacDonald, 2015).
Cultural anthropological work, however, has been more wide-ranging, bringing an ethnographic focus to space-related activities, drawing in geographical themes, such as Messeri’s (2016) study of how mapping and comparative terrestrial landscapes are employed in space exploration, as well as our fascination of finding ‘earth-like’ planets – opening up questions of wider cosmic relationalities (Messeri 2017) and cosmopolitics (Salazar 2018). There has also been a focus on how subsequent limits and extremes of the exo provoke new understandings of humanness, environment, temporality, and of inter-species life on Earth” (Valentine et al. 2012)
It is these cultural-conceptual ideas - rather than geographical mapping and politics - I pick up here.
Contemporary study of space evidences an active tussle between CP Snow’s two cultures debate: Scientific study provides a framework for understanding the universe’s material ordering; yet it is through the cultural imagination that we narrate a worldview. And, as cultural investigators of space remind us, the task of describing cosmological existence requires the application of a kind of poetics which while integral to early science is missing in modern debates (Aït-Touati 2011; Campion 2017).
So, moving forward with this work I am interested in pursuing themes which re-narrate and expand imaginal horizons through a post-planetarity, a more expansive cosmopolitanism, encountering and grappling with non-terrestrial natures.
Unlike von Humbolt, I’m not seeking harmony – rather I expect such themes to challenge and unsettle any modernist conceptualisation of order.... and I would certainly expect it to be a good while before humans come close to fully grokking the cosmic. I’ve identified three broad themes of interest: the post-human; the weird; and the super and impossible.
The posthuman
Post-humanism is a theoretical framework that challenges traditional human-centric perspectives and explores the blurring boundaries between humans and non-human entities. Post-humanism emphasises the role of technology as a mediator in human-space interactions. In the first instance technology is understood as not merely a tool but an active participant that influences human perception, experience, and understanding of space via telescopes, space vehicles, and communication systems that extend human capabilities and shape engagement with the cosmos.
As humans inhabit and potentially colonise extreme environments with the aid of technologies the lines between machine and human become blurred leading to Hybrid and Cyborg Subjectivities.
In the context of space, human augmentation such as exoskeletons, artificial intelligence, and genetic modifications - alongside any evolved adaptations - blurs the human. Will the first baby born in space – on the moon or on Mars – still be considered human?
The move into space opens up a Post-Earth Perspective, and encourages a broader cosmic outlook – including implications for human identity, social structures, and ethics.
Current geophilosophical ideas of planetary sociality are expanded to a cosmic sociality where humans concede co-existential ethics beyond the planetary sphere through to the wider cosmos – expanding eco-philosophical ideas of anthropocosmic ethics (see Mickey 2007; Eliade 1970) – of interdependence and interconnectedness of humans and the cosmos
Such a cosmic move for the human similarly expands the sphere of impact, and it has been suggested that the newly coined anthropocene era may be better termed cosmocene (Nikolov & Hristova 2020).
Cosmic weirding
Cosmic weirding draws on Timothy Morton’s (2016) dark ecology.
It refers to the recognition that the cosmos is a complex, unpredictable, and often perplexing entity that eludes human comprehension. It encompasses the strange and unexpected phenomena, the inherent limitations of human understanding, and existential questions that arise from our engagement with the vastness of the universe. It invites us to embrace cosmic weirdness with humility, curiosity, and a willingness to question our assumptions about reality.
Drawing from complexity theory, it emphasises the non-linear dynamics, emergent properties, and interconnectedness of cosmic systems, which can give rise to unexpected phenomena and outcomes.
Cosmic weirding excises modernist notions of stability, predictability, and objectivity. It questions the notion of a potentially unified, coherent, and knowable cosmos, highlighting the fragmented, diverse, and sometimes contradictory nature of our experiences and interpretations of the universe.
It resonates with the speculative realist perspective, which posits that reality exists independently of human perception and thought. It acknowledges that the cosmos operates according to its own laws and principles, often exceeding our capacity to fully comprehend or explain. And it emphasises the existence of entities and forces that elude human understanding, leading to a sense of ontological strangeness.
Cosmic Weirding can be related to existentialist thought – the human struggle to find meaning, purpose, and identity in a seemingly indifferent universe. It acknowledges that grappling with existential angst and awe-inspiring nature of cosmic encounters, which can evoke feelings of both wonder and existential dread.
The impossible / super / meta
The themes of impossible, super and meta have hints of speculative realism, but are inspired by the work of religious studies scholar Jeffrey Kripal.
Kripal focuses largely on religious experience, but pushes into the supernatural and strange.
The impossible, for example, represents a break from ordinary reality, where traditional boundaries of time, space, and consciousness are transcended. These experiences often involve the dissolution of conventional distinctions, blurring the lines between self and other, mind and matter, or the natural and the supernatural.
Such an approach I believe is useful applied to the cosmological particularly in opening up imaginal pathways, and narratives with which to navigate the aforementioned cosmic weirdness.
For example, Kripal’s work on the super explores the ways in which superhero stories and characters tap into the realm of the extraordinary and the impossible. He shows how these narratives incorporate elements of the supernatural, the metaphysical, and mythological symbolism, resonating with deep-seated human yearnings for transcendence and transformation.
Marvel comics and movies, for example, effectively socialise significant physical and metaphysical concepts, which include: quantum physics, the multiverse, wormholes, cosmic energy, time travel, dark matter and energy - alongside the existence of other sentient beings and civilisations interacting with and impacting human pasts and futures.
Such stories help expand the cultural imagination to cosmic realities, and with thinking through wider meta-physical realities – aligning with calls within social thought for a vitalist metaphysics (see Kripal 2022; Gosh 2021) – the development of a deeper worldview that challenges reductionist approaches.
Further, where we now have well-regarded reporters, researchers and academics acknowledging and taking seriously meta-physical and abnormal phenomena, we will likely require expanded theories and narratives for sense making, for reorienting worldviews as the human extends through the exo, the alien and the cosmic.
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At this stage, of course, these are formative ideas. But, following Cosgrove’s call, I believe there are profound truths for the human to be found by looking out beyond the geo. Understanding any cosmic order will, however, be a long time coming.
Thanks for your attention.
