I Am the Alien

International Journal of the Commons, 2023

How should we orient ourselves towards thinking about what we have in common with outer space? How can be become better commoners, more conscious of the ways in which we are connected, and not connected, to the orbital commons? This paper attempts to explore these questions by developing an approach to thinking about outer space as a commons that is far more historical than would be typical, rooted in the conviction that even we here on Earth already live within a commons that includes orbital space. To bring out this point, it develops two concepts, terrestrial bias and the nightscape, each of which allows us to shift our attention towards our existing entanglements with orbital space, and away from more habitual ways of looking at space. Thus deconstructing space futurism and its conservative ecological other, the paper shows that orbital commoning is possible, provided we learn to be capable of resisting the allure of science fiction speculations and the fear-driven anxieties that we have inherited from the theological thinking of the past.

Subjectivity

Esposito points out, ''for life to remain as such, it must submit itself to an alien force that, if not entirely hostile, at least inhibits its development'' (Esposito 2013, p. 8) Aliens have not particularly found a hospitable milieu within the set of conditions of life that we call ''The Earth''. Popular culture has been rife with alien visitations, and conspiracy theories are abound with inexplicable phenomena, oddities, ''strange stuff'', puzzles and paradoxes, which gesture towards alternate realities and visitations by ''things'' not of this world. The trope of visitation presumes an entity not of this world, which encroaches and even disrupts what might count as life, and particularly forms of life, which might challenge human sense making and grids of intelligibility. The alien exists at the nexus of different scales of matter, including the planetary, biological and the popular, disclosing a cosmos that exceeds current systems of thought as well as displacing the human from its apparent centre. As a political figuration, the alien has found a home within the context of queer and critical race politics providing a range of creative and critical responses to the cultural convergences made between the alien and the queer and/or black person. Within the context of Afrofuturism, for example, the alien has provided the conditions for the shaping of a ''performative image'' that can be inhabited, lived and practiced, specifically through micro-registers of experience, such as music. 1 The focus on practices and forms which do not conform to a specific semiotics of identities, for example, enacts a particular ''politics of race'' that exposes how the

AI & Society, 2018

This paper is addressed to recent theoretical discussions of the Anthropocene, in particular Bernard Stiegler’s Neganthropocene (Open Universities Press, 2018), which argues: “As we drift past tipping points that put future biota at risk, while a post-truth regime institutes the denial of ‘climate change’ (as fake news), and as Silicon Valley assistants snatch decision and memory, and as geneediting and a financially-engineered bifurcation advances over the rising hum of extinction events and the innumerable toxins and conceptual opiates that Anthropocene Talk fascinated itself with – in short, as ‘the Anthropocene’ discloses itself as a dead-end trap…” The objective of this paper is therefore twofold: 1. to discuss how the Anthropocene is appropriated to certain ideological discourses in order (paradoxically) to maintain the hegemony of precisely those systems of production that have most accelerated climate change etc.; 2. to consider how the factography of the Anthropocene is exploited in this process to mask the ideological character of industry-aligned "technocratic" environmental management. The paper is not concerned with specific case studies in terms of government and industry policy, or climate science, but rather with the ways in which the discourse of the Anthropocene has been inflected within the humanities and the broader cultural field – that is to say, ideologically, as a system or logic of meaning. How the Anthropocene "means" is, in this respect, a question of some importance. This paper does not attempt to address all the facets of this question, but focuses upon a central "apocalyptic" strain in the discourse of the Anthropocene drawn particularly from Francis Fukuyama's millennial posthumanism and centred in the question of "sustainability" as catastrophe management – with the risk that real environmental degradation will become an alibi for a revived neoliberalism. In other words, that the critical Earth system transformations that characterise the Anthropocene are themselves commodities, and that the project of their amelioration is in process of defining a future (opportunistic) "crisis" rhetoric with a global political franchise. The ideological import of the Anthropocene stems precisely from the fact that it is planetary and, while catalysed by human agency, independent in its specific behaviour from it. The Anthropocene objectively presents as the contemporary counterpart of the Cold War doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction and the most compelling argument for a new kind of technological "arms race." But it also presents as the condition of an emerging ideological discourse which will determine how this race is run. From the discourse on “energy security” to the widespread “security crackdown” on environmental activists across the socalled developed & developing world, the Anthropocene has come to represent the co-option of a scientific factography for the thinly disguised resurgence of “ideological science” of the Fukuyamaesque variety (post-history, post-human). For Fukuyama, the true meaning of “posthuman” is thus the accomplishment of humanity’s historical mission. As the “End of History” designates an end of ideological struggle, so too the dénouement of the Anthropocene & the “ends of man” represent the accomplished purpose of species warfare: dominion, not simply over the world, but over all possible worlds. According to this narrative, science – like technology – must be uniquely at the service of the maintenance of the global order, organised around a universal appeal to “crisis management.” It’s precisely for this reason that what calls itself post-human masks the return of an ever-more-apocalyptic Humanism.

Rhetorical Ecologies, 2024

While the science of ecology may be centered on the life of organisms, that term also extends beyond life and its affectability to the non-living oikos, the home on which those lives depend. As The Homer Encyclopedia details, an oikos "consists of the house itself..., land for agriculture, orchards, and vineyards, livestock (cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs) grazed on uncleared or marginal land, and its human members: the nuclear family at its head (husband, wife, sons, and daughters), slaves and such other types of dependent laborers as there might be..., and higher-status 'retainers'" (373). Clearly, ecology is concerned with much more than just the living, but also with those things that support life-the house, the labor, and the land including its quality as uncleared, fertile, or marginal, a quality dependent on non-human activities. While rhetorical ecologists like Marilyn Cooper have viewed agency and activities as distributed and decentered from the human 1 , my question here concerns how, perhaps, our oikos has centered on an active bios without adequately explaining the activities of inert, physical matter. Bruno Latour raises a similar spectre in his interview with Lynda Walsh. He cites his own dissatisfaction with rhetoric as not knowing "What allows for continuity, so that you can go on talking about… how do you proceed on smoothly into the nitrogen cycle and that sort of thing? Whatever is your term to cover that enterprise, we need a term that doesn't break down at the limit of consciousness" (417). What Latour seems to suggest here is that for a fully coherent ecological rhetoric we must specify how persuasion happens across domains of the noetic and anoetic, not just the sapient and the sentient. That is, Latour doesn't see how rhetoric can encompass the difference between thinking and non-thinking, or between sensing and

2012

Atlantis: Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies, 2018

This article looks at the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still (Derrickson 2008) as a representative example of a group of early twenty-first century science fiction films that have shown remarkable interest in transnational and global phenomena. Given the recent emphasis of the genre on these issues, this article proposes cosmopolitanism as a particularly useful theoretical framework for analyzing contemporary science fiction. The article focuses on the remake's reliance on the figure of the alien and its destructive potential as a means of drawing attention to the global threat of climate change. The Day the Earth Stood Still presents cosmopolitanism as a perspective and way of acting that develops as a response to specific transnational challenges.

Acta Astronautica, 2013

If scientists engaged in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) detect a signal from an extraterrestrial civilization, one of the most pressing issues facing humankind will be “Should we reply, and if so, what should we say?” Building on an infrastructure that the SETI Institute used to gather over 50,000 messages from around the world to send onboard the Kepler mission, Earth Speaks invites people to submit online their text messages, pictures, and sounds, as they ponder what they would want to say to an extraterrestrial civilization. Participants for the study have been recruited from 68 nations, from all walks of life. By tracking demographic variables for each person submitting a message, we have identified commonalities and differences in message content that are related to such factors as age and gender. Similarly, by tracking the date on which messages were submitted and the location from which the message was sent, we have also identified the way in which message content is related to time and geographic location. Furthermore, when we compare previous themes derived from textual messages to our current categorical analysis of submitted images, we find our textual themes to be concurrently validated. In doing so, we find the Earth Speaks Website not only allows for the construction of interstellar messages, but also functions as a projective psychological assessment of species-level human identity. We next proceed to demonstrate the generative power of our method by showing how we can synthesize artificial messages from the Earth Speaks messages. We then discuss how these artificially generated messages can be tailored to represent both commonality and diversity in human thought as it is revealed through our data. We end by discussing our method's utility for cross-disciplinary research in the social sciences and humanities.

Contemporary Literature, 2017

Here I am with an excellent job, writing rarely-(handling the rare books in a library. .. in (Harvard). .. in Boston. . .)-lonely as a kangaroo in an aquarium, and then you have to write about how on the other side of the country people are really alive, thinking significantly, getting drunk significantly, fucking significantly. You've upset my cold New England dream world.. .. In the words of Faust, you'll never read to me, "Weh! Weh! / Du hast sie zerstört, / Die schöne Welt". .. So, Mr John Allen Ryan, if you love me and have any friends that love me, start them searching for a place in San Francisco where I could be employed, anything from night-watchman in a museum to towel-boy in a Turkish bath.. .. This is a manifesto as well as a personal letter, broadcast its terms.

2023

Conference registration and overview: https://ari.nus.edu.sg/events/environmental-humanities/ The world’s flora and fauna are often classified as native and non-native, indigenous and alien. These simple binaries mark biological life and, in doing so, define what belongs where and why. But when species travel, they change, transforming cultures and ecologies in their wake. While some species movements can foster explosive reproduction rates that rupture and ravage nature’s ecosystems—resulting in economic losses, biodiversity declines, and the spread of diseases—other kinds of biological flows can cultivate new ways of belonging, new food webs, and new types of cultural and ecological services. Learning from Aliens aims to center the travels, histories, and ecologies of non-native species to show how these kinds of stories are reshaping the work done by the environmental humanities while at the same time fostering new possibilities for interdisciplinary research. As a key deliverable of our SSRTG-funded project, “Linking the Digital Humanities to Biodiversity History in Singapore and Southeast Asia,” this workshop seeks to put into conversation diverse bodies of historical scholarship, biological knowledge production, and public outreach-focused museum and art practice. Their fruitful conversation will provide us with new insights and understandings about non-native species, the novel worlds they create, and the changes they set in motion. Building on our project’s network of biologists, historians, curators, digital botanists, and artists, among others, we intend to examine how thinking with aliens can open new pathways for researching and storying the urgency and complexity of environmental change. Learning from Aliens thus aims to leverage our project’s innovative scientific, digital, and historical methods as part of a broader, more critical discussion about the placeness and out-of-placeness of non-native species in today’s natural world.

Culture Machine, 2012