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id	eprints-29897
recordtype	eprints
institution	SOAS, University of London
collection	SOAS Research Online
language	English
language_search	English
description	In this article, I seek to develop the argument that the law of outer space, as it was to be developed during the 1960s and 1970s, configured outer space as a ‘commons’ in order to displace two prevailing ‘dystopic’ socio-technical imaginaries that were to be associated with the Cold War. One of these was that outer space might become a place of warfare – and, more specifically, a warfare of annihilatory proportions between the two main protagonists of the Cold War; the other, that it might be the object of ‘primitive accumulation’. Drawing upon the work of Herbert Marcuse, I argue that, whilst the nascent code of outer space visibly sought to repress both of these possibilities, it did so by bringing into play a particular ‘technological rationality’, in which each of these aversions were to reappear as sustaining configurations – as what might be called the rational irrationalities of a Cold War commons.
format	Journal Article
author	Craven, Matthew
author_facet	Craven, Matthew
authorStr	Craven, Matthew
author_letter	Craven, Matthew
title	‘Other Spaces’: Constructing the Legal Architecture of a Cold War Commons and the Scientific-Technical Imaginary of Outer Space
publisher	Oxford University Press
publishDate	2019
url	https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/29897/