FEELING COLONIAL: THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE, THE SEARCH FOR EXOPLANETS, AND THE AFFECTIVE EXPERIENCE OF COLONIZATION

Abstract

Abstract

Traditional arguments about exigence have focused on whether a situation in the world creates the urgency and need to act or whether the speaking itself creates the urgency. Numerous critiques have complicated this pairing, including Jenny Edbauer’s work on rhetorical ecologies where affect circulates and can be public. Studying feelings around space colonization pushes toward an even more central role for affect in defining exigence. Exigence can be the main point of most rhetorical acts both towards others and the self. Beyond making a case or identifying with someone, the goal is to create a common feeling of urgency with a common style or set of emotional links (joyful, angry, offended, etc.). This feeling is the base for action and any further justifications that are needed, even as those justifications further drive the feeling. This essay explores affective elements of space colonization, combining language around the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and its occasional looks at potentially habitable exoplanets with glimpses of space colonization fiction for the affective elements of colonization presented. While space colonization is not the same thing as earthly colonization of inhabited places, it ultimately runs into many of the same issues of exploitation while asserting a kind of ultimate ethical importance, in this case, the preservation of the human species. The affective power of this purpose combined with the sense of adventure involved make arguments against space colonization difficult and call for an expanded understanding of how colonizing affects even the senses of the colonizers.