JungleAAA:
or, reclaiming imaginary space
Go West!
From Kennedy's 1960 claim to put a man on the moon till the International Spacestation (ISS), all calls to head out into space have been the offspring of the nineteenth century North American settlers cry to Go West! Their conquest of the American West being the ultimate model with which space exploration has been endlessly compared. But, it's a comparison which cuts both ways. 'Cause, just as the reality of the colonization of America was far removed from the romanticized idea of Manifest Destiny, a critical reading of the politics of spacetravel will uncover that behind the images of objective scientific research, acts of heroism, and the good for all mankind, there are political and economical processes at work which draw a completely different picture. It shows how, from the start, the space industry has been co-produced, co-financed, and co-starred by the military, the weapon industry and multinational cooperations.
A situation, the Association of Autonomous Astronauts (AAA) has rallied against from their foundation in 1995. From this point of view Star Wars is not a new phenomenon. And George W. Bush's National Missile Defense (NMD) is just another level of the militarization of space. But, the fact that the Bush administration single-handedly is canceling arms-control agreements and thereby redrawing the maps of power, shows us a different geopolitics at work that calls out for a renewed interest in the politics of space. America's NMD is not just about the control of the skies against incoming missiles from the so-called hostile rogue states. This complicated system of satellites is also being developed to impose an image upon the world which is, not only, very selective but, which serves American interests alone. So, NMD is as much about the domination of inner- as it is about outer space.
Those were the days
All this stems from a particular kind of pathological nostalgia for the time when the world was clearly divided into two blocs, when the Iron Curtain was firmly into place, and when the power positions were well defined. Those were the days, when America had no trouble in selling their perspective to a world paralyzed by fear of nuclear annihilation. But after the fall of the Berlin Wall in '89, America has increasingly felt it more difficult to colonize the minds of their allies and enemies alike. With the other superpower gone, the United States has neither been able to uphold the simplified geostratical imagery of the Cold War, nor to provide a convincing content to their New World Order.
Since then, the world has exploded. New geographical boundaries are being drawn constantly. And because of the new media we can all plug into a very diverse array of images, some new and emergent, some located into older, neglected or obscured traditions. The worldwide success of this instantaneous globalization that doesn't stand for simplification or unification but for difference and otherness, is the proof that the United States have lost its grip on the world. From the start, the Bush administration has made it clear that America is again assuming its position as leader of the world. Not in the sense of an actual leadership, involving themselves into international treaties and trying to solve the problems of hunger and war that rage the world. But more as the most powerful nation on earth, dictating its terms and not to be messed with. The refusal to ratify the Kyoto agreement was one manifestation of this new leadership, NMD is another.
National Missile Defense is not just a tactical weapon designed to strike at specific locations. It is also a very efficient means for surveillance. The satellites that cross the sky have the means to photograph every dot on earth. But at the same time, that earth's inner- and outer layers are being rendered into pixels, the world is being reordered into a specific imagery. Visualizing what is deemed important and obscuring, if not bombing contradictory images, NMD is a way for America to prescribe how the rest of the world views itself.
Geronimo!
The activities of jungleAAA and the astronauts of the AAA have always been directed against the militarization of space.
Our actions are always aimed at deconstructing NASA's hidden agenda. That's why we have made plans to build our own rockets and fill space with people and ideas. But these are more than a practical solution to shift the galaxian balance of power. Our spaceships are also the material denial of any simplistic, and homogenous reproduction of either space or earth. Our imperative that "everybody is an astronaut" is not only a battlecry to open up space for all, but, also, to see that the heterogeneity of earth is being reflected in conditions of zero-gravity. Not because we believe that any image can be a truthful simulation of the complexities of the real, but, because we want to import more differentials in order to create a more disorderly and non-unitary picture of earth as well as space.
Just as Geronimo's Apachean revolt against American authorities,
jungleAAA is reclaiming imaginary space from the cowboys in the White House