ABSTRACT
This chapter is a continuation of the last, in that what is implied in any discussion of the body is its configuration in terms of the space that it inhabits, traverses or occupies. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s Body without Organs (BwO) is a body conceived in terms of its deterritorializations and reterritorializations. While the molar body, the organism, colonizes and fixes space, the BwO is committed to destructuring the territory of fixed organic hierarchies. In their association with the early pioneers of the American West, astronauts signify as exemplars of the progressive spirit, which, in its association with the concept of manifest destiny, marks outer space as a territory that those exhibiting ‘the best human traits’ can claim for themselves. Equally, like the promise of the wilderness that constructed previously unexplored territory as a space in which the hero would discover himself, so outer space promises an escape from the restraints of civilization and the world of everyday life.
