Remembering the Space Age. - Black Vault Radio Network (BVRN)

a SeCoNd Nature rISINg:
SpaCeFLIght IN aN era oF repreSeNtatIoN
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the subtitle raises a question: What are the implications of this literature and
its associated historical claims for our understanding of the development of
spacefight, its cultural meanings, and its integration into the broader feld
of history? even so, why should this question merit our curiosity? Because
the changes mapped and claimed by this swath of literature are coeval and
intimately bound to the development of spacefight in its many dimensions—as
signifcant genre of postwar technology; as site of knowledge creation; as state
activity, business undertaking, military venture, and global utility; as a cultural
zone for contesting the era’s values and beliefs; and as national and international
trope extraordinaire.
First, an admission: What I am ofering is an analytic sketch—of period
history, of a diverse group of theoretical literatures and positions—and proceeds
primarily by feeding of of theory rather than empirical data. despite such
simplifcations, I think one can argue for an alternative perspective on the
feld’s historiography and research problematic. Let me frst historically situate
the question of representation in slightly more detail, and then ofer a couple
of thumbnail case studies to suggest the historical stakes when we juxtapose
capitalism, semiotics, and spacefight. 5
the ChaLLeNge oF repreSeNtatIoN
Based on the theoretical literature already cited, almost all a product
of the 1970s and after, one might ofer a periodization of the postwar years
that traces the trajectory of representation and its cultural importance. In the
1950s and 1960s, the image and semiotics take on a stronger, more pervasive
cultural function, with emphasis on their phenomenological everywhere-ness
and density—especially in the media-rich West—resulting in an incipient
problem on a transnational scale. think of McLuhan’s global village and
his Western-centered geopolitical perspective refected in his 1964 thought
Capitalism (durham, NC: duke university press, 1991); The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and
Space in the World System (Bloomington, IN: Indiana university press, 1992); The Cultural Turn:
Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983-1998 (London: Verso, 1998); A Singular Modernity:
Essay on the Ontology of the Present (London:Verso, 2002); and Jameson and Masao Miyoshi, eds.,
The Cultures of Globalization (durham, NC: duke university press, 1998). For a discussion of
Jameson’s importance to this discussion and his centrality to the related issue of postmodernity as
a descriptor of the postwar condition see perry anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity (London:
Verso, 1998); as regards the argument for a “second nature,” see especially p. 53.
5. this essay is a companion to two earlier explorations by the author on space history and its
historiography, see: Martin Collins, “Community and explanation in Space history (?),” in
Critical Issues in the History of Spacefight,edited by Steven J. dick and roger Launius (Washington,
dC: NaSa, 2006); and “production and Culture together: or, Space history and the problem
of periodization in the postwar era,” in Societal Impact of Spacefight, by Steven J. dick and roger
Launius (Washington, dC: NaSa, 2007).