2 research outputs found
Outer space technopolitics and postcolonial modernity in Kazakhstan
This is the final version. Available on open access from Routledge via the DOI in this recordThis article examines the role of outer space technopolitics in post-Soviet
Kazakhstan. It explores how outer space, the technological artefact of global
relevance, works as a postcolonial fetish of modernity that is called upon to produce
what it represents, i.e. the reality of a technologically advanced Kazakh nation. The
article shows that in its project of becoming a spacefaring nation the country reiterates
major incentives that have motivated nuclear and space programme development in
the postcolonial context of the Global South. The article explores how collaboration
with Russia allows Kazakhstan to claim its share in the Soviet space legacy rather
than to distance itself from it. It then traces the rise of a new internationalism in the
Kazakhstani space programme outside the post-Soviet context. The article contributes
to the debate on postcolonial techonopolitics and shows how outer space has been
used to enhance the conventional domain of postcolonial national ideologies –
nativism and tradition – with technology and science. Finally, the article depicts how
the growing resistance to the space programme among Kazakh civil society groups
reveals a close association of the environmental agenda with an “eco-nationalism”
permeated by a profoundly anti-imperial and, ultimately, antiauthoritarian political
discourse