Out of Exception, Into Emergency: Fast-forward to Earth Zero

Inevitably interconnected with the “Great Acceleration” of the Anthropocene, space race has played a substantial role in the reassessment of humankind’s identity as interplanetary. The growing perception of new possible frontiers beyond the Earth’s borders, whether on the Moon or on Mars, has opened an era of neo-colonial projects involving language(s), culture(s), and media. More than in Elon Musk’s and Robert Zubrin’s recent proclamations, however, my article focuses on the durable effect of the myth of nation building on the quest for extraterrestrial territories. It is a fact that the current debate on Terraforming and manned expeditions frequently refers to Pilgrims, pioneers, transplantation, Dream, and Destiny. What is almost completely absent, on the other hand, is the awareness that counter-narrations existed since the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century. As early as 1890, in Mars as the Abode of Life, astronomer Percival Lowell insisted that extraordinary measures be urgently taken to keep the Earth from meeting the same destiny as the red planet – that is, to be reduced to a wasteland. Long before climate change, globalization, and world pandemics, Lowell was fully aware that neither our planet nor America were exceptional sites: on the contrary, they were places on the verge of an unprecedented and irrevocable state of emergency. This essay deals with such counter-narrations and with their controversial legacy.