Overview

Insightful Essays That Deepen the Understanding of the Relationship Between Space, Capitalism, and the Environment. Cosmic Fragments brings together the most recent academic scholarship on the history of space exploration with a particular focus on the connections between spaceflight activities, capitalism, and the environment. The sixteen essays collected here highlight in different ways the internal friction, between the utopian, upward moving, and positivist imperative of the cosmic imaginary, and the frisson manifested in more Earthly dislocations, displacements, and destruction caused by the material reality of space exploration. Drawing insight from postcolonial studies, environmental studies, feminist theory, anthropology, geography, film studies, and STS more broadly, these essays are collectively organized around four broad themes: landscape, empire, waste, and decline. AUTHOR: Asif A. Siddiqi is a professor of history at Fordham University in New York who teaches and writes on the history of science and technology. His latest work has gravitated toward global history with an interest in histories of techno scientific infrastructures in the postcolonial world. He has held visiting positions at Harvard, MIT, the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, Caltech, and Princeton. Siddiqi is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and he is the co-editor of the 'Studies in the History of Science and Technology' series at Johns Hopkins University Press.

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9780822948438

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Reviews

Cosmic Fragments is an exciting collection of essays challenging the commonsense idea that space history is only the technological innovations and political interests of the Cold War superpowers. The book gives us a new history that disrupts our favorite 'right stuff' myths, unveiling overlooked places, people, and perspectives. It is essential reading for exploring the space-age ruins of India, Japan, Australia, South America, Canada, and China, as well as those of Russia and the United States.--DeWitt Douglas Kilgore, Indiana University Cosmic Fragments makes a valuable contribution to space exploration history through its coverage of the negative and problematic aspects of space development.--Michael J. Neufeld, author of Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War Cosmic Fragments enlarges the purview of the history of space exploration, foregrounding those narrative fragments normally consigned to the edges--environmental damage, Indigenous dispossession, infrastructural entanglements, failed pathways, and cultural registers of ambiguity and rupture. This anthology is a significant achievement and is poised to make a valuable contribution to space history.--Matthew Hersch, Harvard University

Author Information

Asif A. Siddiqi is professor of history at Fordham University in New York. He writes and teaches on the history of science and technology as well as on modern Russian history. His books include The Red Rockets’ Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination, 1857–1957 and the forthcoming Departure Gates: Global Histories of Space on Earth. Siddiqi is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015) and the coeditor of the Studies in the History of Science and Technology series at Johns Hopkins University Press.

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