Future Spaces of Power: The Cultural Politics of Digital and Outer Spaces(Critical Futures: Creative Interventions and Revolutionary Possibilities)

Future Spaces of Power explores political, cultural, and societal narratives of future space(s) on a global scale to complicate the cultural logic of systemic futures that exist outside the boundaries of dominant political imaginaries. Contributors critically engage with alternative visions found in literature, film, and other cultural artifacts that encourage us to either live with or escape from the systemic conditions of neoliberalism and late capitalism and consider what these alternative visions might do – or fail to do – in combating anti-democratic futures, environmental degradation, and new forms of imperialism. Through these analyses, the volume collectively argues that anti-postmodern and postmodern readings of future spaces overlook the everyday lived experiences of certain bodies – including chronic health problems, effects from systemic racism, and other experiences of insecurity, fear, and death in the face of institutionalized violence – by disregarding differential experiences of time within different spatial contexts. Contributors suggest that critiques of narratives occurring within and about virtual and metaspaces, artificial intelligence, space exploration, and even the colonization of outer space can provide critical insights concerning global futures and our perceptions of space and time, especially as they inform how we should live in the present amid environmental destruction, information capitalism, neoliberalism, and the remaining infrastructures of colonialism. Ultimately, this book interrogates how a variety of media shape and inform our understanding and assumptions about conceptualizations of future space(s) as it demonstrates how governmentality eliminates and regulates surplus bodies – both overtly and covertly – through the technological, spatial, discursive, and temporal management of space.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements List of Contributors Introduction: Future Spaces of Power Caroline Alphin, E. Leigh McKagen, Shelby E. Ward Part 1: Outer Spaces 1. (Re)Creating Home and Empire in Contemporary Star Trek E. Leigh McKagen (Virginia Tech, USA) 2. Disimagination and Corporate Futurity: The Neoliberal Enclosure of Outer Space Craig Henry Jones (Lancaster University, UK) 3. From the Belt to Across the Sol: Lessons from The Expanse for Reforming the Outer Space Treaty Troy Thurman (Independent Scholar, USA) 4. Cosmic Dismemberment: Decolonizing Space Exploration In Cuban Speculative Fiction Lu Han (Cornell University, USA) 5. The Pedagogy of Alien Response Movies: Limitations in liberal international politics Shelby E. Ward (Tusculum University, USA) Part 2: Digital Spaces 6. The Biopolitics of Modern Social Darwinism: A Critique of Neo-reactionism and Its Anti-Democratic Spaces Caroline Alphin (Virginia Tech and Radford University, USA) 7. You Reap What You Sow: Affect, Neoliberal Techno-Utopias and Community Building in Stardew Valley Deanna Holroyd (The Ohio State University, USA) and Holly Parker (University of Lincoln, USA) 8. Telehealth Publics: Networked Milieus of Care Production Shaun Respess (North Carolina State University, USA) 9. Kitot'sattook: Indigitalized Spaces, Time Travel and Kinship Computing Interconnection (KCI) Patricia May-Derbyshire (Simon Fraser University, Canada) Index

About the Author :
Caroline Alphin is Instructor of English at Radford University and Instructor of Political Science at Virginia Tech, USA. E. Leigh McKagen is Instructor in the Department of History at Virginia Tech, USA. Shelby E. Ward is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Tusculum University, USA.

Review :
This one-of-a-kind text asks us to seriously consider the outer limits-both spatial and conceptual-of neoliberal capitalism and its colonial ventures. By bringing together the 'final frontiers' of digital and outer spaces, their explorations and expansions, and, crucially, the political and cultural logics that underpin these quests, the contributions featured in this volume provide important critical insights into the study of contemporary neoliberalism and imperialism. Fun, thought-provoking, and relevant to current political and social concerns, Future Spaces of Power has much to offer to students and scholars of political theory, international relations, and cultural studies. Future Spaces of Power is a theory-rich and critically diverse collection that pushes science fiction studies into new frontiers in postcolonial research. This book sets the tone for studying the cultural and political economics of outer space in 21st century.