Making Mars resonate: the role of analogue sites in territorializing China's outer space imaginaries Articles uri icon

publication date

  • January 2024

start page

  • 132

end page

  • 152

issue

  • 1

volume

  • 12

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 2162-2671

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 2162-268X

abstract

  • This paper analyses how Chinese desert landscapes are being used as analogue sites for the public to gain a first-hand and embodied experience of Martian-like landscapes through the scientific, educational, and tourist facilities and activities that Mars Camp in Qinghai province of the People's Republic of China offers visitors. By analysing accounts and chronicles of visitors' experiences (mainly based on digital materials showcased by the Mars Camp website), this paper focuses on how the said camp rhetorically frames particular features of these landscapes to create both an imaginary and a material continuity between Earth and outer space, one which is produced through voluminous immersive encounters, that is, experiences that expand the very "sense" of territory upwards and outwards.

keywords

  • outer space; critical geopolitics; volumetric turn; territorialisation; mars; china; resonance