Geek saviours to the rescue? Primitive accumulation, astropropriation, and exoimperialism in NewSpace entrepreneurship

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the contemporary commercial space race – colloquially known as NewSpace – from a Marxian, technofeminist and decolonial perspective. Theorising the emergent entrepreneurial activities aimed at the human colonisation and exploitation of outer space as part of an ongoing process of primitive accumulation, we contribute innovative conceptualisations of 21st century entrepreneurial space adventurism as exoimperialism, and the privatisation of outer space resources as astropropriation. We develop the notion of geek saviourism as a function of the new geek hegemony within normative white masculinity, used to justify species-level risk under the auspices of homo entrepreneurus, a subgenre of homo economicus. Our critical examination exhorts extreme caution regarding NewSpace entrepreneurial activities, given the longstanding trajectory of entrepreneurial coloniality they reproduce, the mythoi from which they stem, and the devastatingly unequal sociogeny they can generate.