Infrastructural Violence: Postcolonial Histories of Space on Earth

FAIN: FEL-303128-25

Asif Siddiqi
Fordham University (Bronx, NY 10458-9993)

Research and writing leading to a book on how mid-20th century space exploration was made possible through extensive physical infrastructure constructed in developing countries.  

This proposed book project highlights the considerable ground infrastructure built in the Global South during the Cold War to support space exploration, and in doing so, proposes an alternative, postcolonial, and global history of spaceflight, one that happened not in space, but on Earth. It argues that space activities during the Cold War, typically associated with high-minded utopian impulses or bipolar superpower competition, simultaneously masked and excused a host of practices that were extensions and reformulations of older colonial practices, including forced displacements of indigenous populations, environmental damage, illegal occupations, resource extractions, and exploitative market forces.