11 Dec
2024
11 Dec
'24
9:56 a.m.
We are happy to invite you to our 6th talk of the Vienna STS Talk Series in 2024W
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FutureSpace Talk by Eleanor Armstrong & Réka Gál
Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Leicester & STS, TU Munich
December 11, 2024 04:00 PM-05:00 PM
The Playboy Bunny and the Astronaut Wife: Constructing Femininities and the United States
Space Program.
You can register for the talk
here<https://futurespace-project.eu/futurespace-talk-registration/>
Abstract
Inspired by Ahmed (2010), we follow the figures of the 'playboy bunny' and the
'astronaut wife' through the cultural legacies of (north american) space flight.
Following from our work on what feminist interventions can offer to social studies of
outer space (2023), in this talk we work through how femininities of the Other of the
hegemonic masculinities of outer space are constructed. Our work asks how these figures
reverberate in popular cultures to shape present and futures conceptions of femininity in
outer space, and offer pathways that intervene in normative gendered futurities. In
following these figures, we think about what illuminating them might do also for directing
pathways of feminist scholarship on outer space in the future.
We consider the Playboy Bunny: a construct of the pornotopic 1950s, and the discursive
counterpoint to the womanizing young man. Appearing off-handedly in archival interviews
about life at Johnson Space Center during the early space programmes of the 1950s and 60s,
making her way secretly into lunar checklists worn by astronauts on the Moon, and
continuing to draw media attention into the 2000s, we draw on Preciado's biopolitical
theorising (2019) to think through the sexual relations and gender politics of the space
programme. Contrastingly on the mother-whore axis, stands the media construct of the
"astronaut wife." Using perspectives from Feminist Communication Studies, we
explore how the assigned duties of the astronaut wife upheld the figure of the
hypermasculine astronaut. We argue that the caretaking duties assigned to the figure of
the "astronaut wife" extended beyond the confines of her homeboundness and
homemaking into outer space: she was rendered part of the communication technologies
available to take care of the hypermasculine astronaut's mental health. We conclude by
considering how these examples help us pluralise and (re)make future femininities in
relation to outer space.
Biography
Eleanor S Armstrong is a Space Research Fellow at the University of Leicester, UK, where
she leads the Constellations Lab (on Outer Space & Feminism). She was awarded her PhD
at University College London, UK, in 2020; and since then has held positions at the
University of Delaware and Stockholm University, and visiting positions at, among others,
the University of Cambridge, Ingenium Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation, New York
University, and University of Vienna.
Réka P Gál is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Science, Technology and
Society at Technische Universität München. She completed her doctorate at University of
Toronto‘s Faculty of Information. She is the co-editor of Earth and Beyond in Tumultuous
Times: A Critical Atlas of the Anthropocene, published by meson press.
Organiser
Nina Klimburg-Witjes, Assist. Prof. STS Dep Vienna / PI „FutureSpace“ & Joseph
Popper (Postdoc Researcher, STS Dep Vienna / FutureSpace)
FutureSpace (ERC Starting Grant Project), Department of Science and Technology Studies
Location
online via
zoom<https://univienna.zoom.us/j/63251489007?pwd=FBTgiIoQbHPTvmHhnjFwObba9mAGqZ.6>
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Best wishes,
Katrin Hackl
__________
Mag. Katrin Hackl
Research Support & Communication
Department of Science and Technology Studies
University of Vienna
Universitätsstraße 7 /II/ 6th floor (NIG)
1010 Vienna / Austria
Tel.: 0043-1-4277-496007
[cid:image002.jpg@01DB40AD.59CFEBC0]<https://sts.univie.ac.at/>
