ABSTRACT
This chapter is an analysis of the astronaut, of the ways in which they are frequently acted towards and spoken about as though they are innately special, transcendent, or otherwise set-apart from the ordinary. Through an engagement with two characteristics of the positionality of the astronaut, this piece argues that the experiences, and the spectacle, of those involved in human spaceflight offer novel approaches for thinking about the nature of hierarchy – in particular of what David Graeber described as its ‘most elementary forms’. The first part of the analysis looks at the body, of the ways in which astronauts serving on the International Space Station (ISS) are positioned simultaneously as elite objects and sacrificial test subjects; both reified, closed-off, transcendent beings, and producers of biomedical data whose bodily sovereignty is repeatedly compromised. The second part looks at estranged labour on the ISS and explores how expressions of hierarchy found in the dynamic between ground teams and astronaut crews produce alienated social relations. The final section offers methodological reflections, responding to the epistemological problems that potentially accompany situations in which an individual or group of people come to be treated as innately special.
