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Writer's pictureAmy Oke

'Earth, Cosmos and Culture': An Interview with Dr Oliver Dunnett

Earlier this month, our lead editor - Amy Oke, had the pleasure of talking with Dr Oliver Dunnett about his new book 'Earth, Cosmos and Culture: Geographies of outer-space in Britain 1900 - 2020'. Dr Dunnett is currently teaching at Queen's University Belfast and is Chair of the Royal Geographic Society for the Northern Ireland Branch. He has an interest in political, historical, and cultural geography and is one of the leading researchers in geographies of outer space.

Dr Oliver Dunnett



 


'Earth, Cosmos and Culture: Geographies of outer-space in Britain 1900 - 2020' can be purchased as an e-book or in print at https://www.routledge.com/Earth-Cosmos-and-Culture-Geographies-of-Outer-Space-in-Britain-19002020/Dunnett/p/book/9780815356288. QUB students can also find a copy at the McClay library. I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in space travel, whether through a cultural, geographical, historical, or political lens. The book is written in a clear and accessible way, serving as a fantastic introduction to a broad and dynamic topic. Of personal interest to me are sections on the geopoltics of outer space, interstellar exploration, and the literary comparison between sci-fi author H.G Wells and Olaf Stapledon. However, Dunnett also covers the history of the British Interplanetary Society, post war cultural development, and the history of science with it's link to imagination.


Figure 1. 'Earth, Cosmos and Culture: Geographies of outer space in Britain 1900 - 2021' (2021)



We would like to extend our thanks to Dr Dunnett for allowing this interview, and wish him the best for the future.


 

Q1 What first captivated your interest in geographies of outer space?


Oliver Dunnett: Well, I suppose like a lot of people I had just a general fascination with outer space from a young age. That’s probably associated with lots of the iconic imagery associated with space travel and space exploration which finds its way into children’s books and books aimed at young people. So that’s probably how I first became aware of it. You’ve got certain icons like the space shuttle and Apollo landings that just becomes part of popular culture and that was really what drew my interest in outer space.


But the geography part is something that came a bit later, because when I was studying for my degree, we were introduced to an excellent paper by Denis Cosgrove which was all about the Apollo photographs of Earth from space. He was one of the leading cultural geographers of his age, and he was part of the ‘new cultural geography’ movement in the 80s and 90s. So that was interesting to me because there is this leading geographer writing about space. I just thought ‘this is fantastic’, it’s such an interesting paper. It goes into the history of the imagination of the Earth from space as well as the actual production and reception of the Apollo Earth photographs. It was very influential, and I was thinking I could do research on this as a geographer. So as my interest in geography developed, I was thinking I could extend this towards outer space


Amy: That’s quite interesting, I thought you might be more involved with more the cultural, and popular culture side of outer space. It seems you’re interest primarily grew from the science


OD: I suppose, yes. I have always been interested in science. When I was doing my degree, I was actually more into the physical geography side, up until a certain point when I realised that you really have to be on top of your statistics, and physics, and things like that. I thought the thing that actually interested me about physical geography was the visual aspect of it, which I was introduced to at school where you’ve got these nice diagrams and images of all these things to do with physical geography. So that aspect of science has always been interesting to me.


Q-2: Feeding on from that, what inspired you to write this book?


OD: I suppose it’s a similar answer to the previous question really, but in terms of writing a book, that journey started with my PhD. That was about the British Interplanetary Society, at the University of Nottingham, which is where I did my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, so that really formed what was the core of the book. I thought that it would be a good topic for a book, but I should probably expand on it and extend the PhD and alter it where it wouldn’t translate well into a book. I thought that there was probably a gap in the market for a book on British outer space culture.


Amy: I think there definitely is. A lot has been written regarding American, or Soviet cultures of outer space so it’s refreshing to have a change


Q – 3: So why did you choose to focus on British space culture, especially when it hasn’t enjoyed the success of the American programmes?


OD: Space exploration is associated in education and popular culture with the iconic achievements of the Apollo program, American spaceflight and Soviet achievements like Sputnik. But then you look in a bit more detail you realise that outer space culture is not just to do with spaceflight, and the Space Race. It’s also supported by wider culture which isn’t restricted to two space faring nations, in this case America and the USSR. In many ways Britain has just as rich and interesting history of outer space culture as anywhere in the world. There’s this focus on achievements in spaceflight which leads the cultural side of things gets neglected when it comes to academic writing, or even in the popular imagination of outer space. It’s about recognising that Britain has an interesting and storied outer space culture that involves literature, science, politics, and lots of different aspects that can be explored.


Q-4: The acknowledgements of ‘Earth, Cosmos and Culture: Geographies of outer space in Britain 1900 – 2021’ mention the book was 10 years in the making – How has the field of geographies of space developed during that time?


OD: So I started with Denis Cosgrove, and Fraser MacDonald, a geographer at Edinburgh University, was starting to do some interesting work in journal articles about cultures of space exploration and in terms of popular geopolitics, which is really great and interesting in its own right, but there wasn’t much else going on in the field. In more recent years there been a more diverse set of engagements with the geographies of outer space. People are beginning to write about lesser-known aspects of the Apollo programme - for example, Daniel Sage has touched upon the role of gender. And Maria Lane, for example, has written about the imaginative geographies of Mars. This has all come out in the last 10 years, as well as more journal articles with more angles to take on geographies of outer space. It’s been interesting to see that emerge. I’ve been trying to keep in touch with people in the area and we managed to do a joint authored article for ‘Progress in Human Geography’ a few years ago, which was trying to establish all the different ways you might be able to approach this topic in human geography. We covered cultural geography, environmental geography, political geography…it’s great to see the field developing.


Q-5: What does the sublime mean to you?


OD: The sublime is a concept in philosophy, art and culture, that derives from the 18th century . Certain thinkers were considering the natural world and how it could be something that’s overwhelming and that’s something that makes humanity seem insignificant. That was seen in mountainous landscapes and places you might experience directly. But you can also understand it as something to do with the concept of transcendence; so it’s about sort of rising up vertically in both in a physical way but also emotionally, or even spiritually. An example might be how people have concept of heaven as a way of transcending all these things.

I think a really nice way of capturing the sublime is something that’s slightly on the limits of human understanding. So outer space captures the sublime because it’s about physical transcendence in terms of space exploration, as well as transcending the limits of what we know. Outer space is so vast and immense and there’s so much we don’t know about it. It can be a bit of a complex idea, but it’s interesting to examine it in various cultural forms whether it’s literature, or, music, or art.


Q – 6: Having followed the development of geographies of outer space, what is your opinion on the news of recent space travel with SpaceX and the privatisation of space?


OD: There’s been some really interesting developments actually, there’s loads of space news at the moment. The SpaceX programme has been taking US astronauts to the International Space Station, and apparently Jeff Bezos, his company, is going to be ready to put tourists into space briefly in the next year or so. There’s also Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic which maybe isn’t so successful. The British government is getting very interested in unmanned space launches from UK territories too, and there have been similar recent developments in other countries such as Australia.

It's interesting in a number of ways, but probably not in a particularly inspiring way. I’ve felt on the one hand you’ve got the space tourism angle, which I don’t think is a particularly welcome development simply because it’s going to be limited to people who can spend quite a lot of money on a ticket. I’m not sure what the real value of that is, sending a few millionaires into orbit for a few seconds. Some are rightly sceptical about the increased involvement of private companies, although they have always been involved in space, in terms of building engines for examples so it’s nothing terribly new. What is also a little worrying to me, is that there is this collaboration between industry and government, which includes the defence industry. So we could see a greater militarisation of space which is a concern as we don’t want to turn the Earth’s orbit into a militarised realm. There are protections in place that should be respected, such as the 1967 Outer Space Treaty which is supposed to prevent this. The militarisation of space seems to be overlooked in some respects, and considering this aspect, space exploration perhaps isn’t going in a great direction.

There are other, perhaps more benevolent ways to direct the path of space travel, which are more Earth focussed. There’s a lot we haven’t explored in the wider geography of outer space, and we can start investigating this say by understanding more about our solar system. The deep space probes are absolutely fascinating, and I’d like to see more of these in development. From an environmental perspective, the dangers of environmental degradation can be researched from space quite effectively. So there are so many other ways we can utilise space exploration away from a privatised, militarised goal.


Q -7 Your other interests in geography are landscape and literary geographies. As comic books and other popular culture representations are becoming more acknowledged for their role in portraying and perpetuating culture, how might this have impacted academic reception and acceptance of outer space?


OD: Popular culture is something that has been seen as a valid source material in cultural geography for quite a while now. I’m interested in the visual, so that’s why comics interest me because they’re a combination of image and text, and they convey ideas in a slightly different way to say literature or film. I suppose space lends itself to the visual form in certain ways and that can be represented in popular culture. I think popular culture is a good thing to engage with in human geography, and it speaks to the idea that culture is not an elite preoccupation. There’s an outdated understanding of “high culture”, and if you’re looking at popular culture you can perhaps have a more meaningful way of engaging with people’s worldviews. So I think it’s important to continue to work with that. I’m looking forward to reading more into cultural geography and engaging with such texts and media myself.


Q – 8: I had a final question, it’s something that I’ve always wondered about. What do you think of the link outer space has with the ocean in the way people engage with them?


OD: I think it’s really interesting that they share that connection and I think it began because people who were interested in outer space needed a language. The language of the seas just seemed to be a natural ready-made set of terminology and grammar to convey exploration, or adventure in outer space. The language can be used technically, words like ‘spaceship’ for example which are widely used. But then you see broader cultural tropes of maritime adventure written into some fictional accounts of space exploration. An example is in ‘The Martian’, in the book the main character refers to himself as a space pirate at one point. So the language of the seas is still being transposed into outer space. It’s interesting from a critical perspective as well, because the language of maritime adventure is often wrapped up with colonial ideas from the age of imperial expansion. You might be able to sense sometimes why that’s seen as problematic if you apply that sort of colonialist language to outer space.

Another way of looking at it is relating to Arthur C. Clarke, who I’ve done a bit of research on; through his interest in underwater diving, he got the sensation of weightlessness in the water which is what allowed his imagination to flourish. So he was living this underwater existence almost, alongside dreaming and writing about space. There are all sorts of other connections that can be made between the two.


Amy: Thank you taking the time to speak to me today! It’s been great speaking with you, and we wish you all the best with the book.

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