The Way We Talk About Space, and Why It Has to Change
Even though the current trend in space exploration is collaboration and openness to all, we still use the old, familiar analogies of the violent conquests on Earth. It may be an easy mental shortcut to use the historical terminology that comes from the colonisation of the Americas and Africa and the westward conquest of the 1800s, but today’s journalists, space professionals and even governments are recognising the racism, sexism and violence behind the outdated language.
“Language matters, and it’s so important to be inclusive,” said NASA astronaut Leland Melvin during a recent lecture.
The latest issue of the National Geographic features an interview with Lucianne Walkowicz, an astronomer who spent the last year studying the ethics of Mars exploration as the Chair of Astrobiology at the US Library of Congress. “The language we use automatically frames how we envision the things we talk about,” she says, describing why the language we use is so important. “So…we have to consider how we are using that language, and what it carries from the history of exploration on Earth. Even if words like ‘colonization’ have a different context off-world, on somewhere like Mars, it’s still not OK to use those narratives, because it erases the history of colonization here on our own planet. There’s this dual effect where it both frames our future and, in some sense, edits the past.”
Walkowicz says that the term “colonisation” brings up the history of Europeans coming to the Americas. While for some, the history is a romanticized, heroic story, for many others, it is a story of the genocide of the indigenous people. “I think it’s not intuitive, particularly when we talk to white Americans, for example, to think of the history of Columbus’s journey as a story of genocide,” she says. “But it’s important to realize that’s what it is.” Slavery is another event of the past that is closely tied to the concept of colonisation.
Walkowicz says that we need to reconsider other terms, too. “I think the other one is ‘settlement.’ That comes up a lot and obviously has a lot of connotations for folks about conflict in the Middle East.” She prefers the terms “inhabitation” or “humans living off-world.”
She acknowledges that sometimes the new term may add a couple extra words, but she prefers it to something with the negative connotations of the past.
Similarly, Walkowicz finds the word “frontier” problematic: “The implication is not exactly the same for somewhere like space as it is for here, but it similarly draws on the same kinds of narratives that are all based around European settlement,” referring to the narrative of the explorers who traveled westward into the early Americas. Similarly, “manned” is another word that has gender connotations, and shouldn’t be used anymore, she says.
The Space Nation Asgardia promotes access to space for all, removing the existing barriers due to which only a handful of countries currently has access to space exploration.
Similarly, Walkowicz thinks that using proper language is essential to changing how we think about space, and how we move forward to make it all-inclusive.
“If there’s going to be a really inclusive effort to go beyond Earth, it has to start here on Earth,” she says. “It really has to be that people from a wider range of experiences and backgrounds — whether that means socioeconomic, racial, gender, whatever — are included in STEM in general. None of those narratives will become more inclusive until the people shaping them can become more inclusive. Otherwise, it’s just lip service.”
National Geographic asked the question that is perhaps most important — how can one lead people to believe that space is for everyone, and not just a playground for the rich and powerful?
The answer is already out there, says Walkowicz: “The governing document that sets forth all of space law, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, literally says that space is for everyone…the outer space treaty says that space is for humankind, and that it is not to be owned by any individual or nation. It bars things like weapons of mass destruction, and it says outright that you cannot have a military installation on a celestial body.”
She says that the Outer Space Treaty has a lot of good ideas about how we can and cannot explore space, adding that the time to make changes is now: “…this is the moment, as it becomes more possible for a wider range of actors — whether they be nations or individual or otherwise — to go to space, when we have to decide whether those guiding principles are what we really want. This is the moment when we have to look at that treaty and decide who we want to be in the future.”
Learn more on Asgardia.Space
