Earthly entanglements with outer space: Introduction to the theme issue

This introduction situates the Theme Issue Earthly Entanglements with Outer Space in critical outer space-focused scholarship. We argue that "the political" of outer space is anchored in terrestrial places and scales. Drawing together histories of anti-imperial, anticolonial geographic scholarship that underpins critical outer space scholarship, we go on to show how features such as dispossession and disimagination, coloniality, and cosmopolitanism continue to permeate the case studies of this issue. Highlighting space-based and space-linked technologies, we introduce the papers of this collection, showing how place-specific politics ramify across cosmic distances. Critical outer space scholarship shows how framings of outer space that direct our attention upward and away from the here and now, render us into passive spectators, (un)willing conscripts, or immobilized critics. By contrast, we believe attending to Earthly entanglements enables us to take on the activities of thinking, creating, and building heterotopias if we so choose. We look ahead to what critical studies of outer space might do from this juncture: to move onward from this gathering of scholarship we urge future work to center on the ethics and obligations of geographical research and knowledge production, and call for future work that theoretically, empirically, and practically focuses on materiality and access in critical outer space research. This grounded yet (extra)global issue demonstrates outer space is under construction through care, repair, maintenance, and labor here on Earth.