There are critical questions we must engage in before we ever set foot or flag on Mars. Why do we go? How do we convince ourselves it is worth it? In this work, I will analyze the current discourse of Mars. Mars is legitimized as a place through a form of discourse whose roots can be traced back to earlier, colonial forms of discourse. Modernity acts as a normative force by limiting our language to established forms of discourse, like Hegelian notions of progress, while marginalizing other possibilities of narrative. The colonial gaze is only one possible way we have to understand Mars. What is necessary now is to perform the great Foucaultian task of seeking out lost narratives and lost knowledges of our past. I will examine how the power of narrative has been used to convince the public that we should go to Mars. Modernity has phenomenologically shaped Mars and our present discourse of Mars is the result of that metamorphosis. Narratives of science-fiction, science advocacy, special interest groups, and government bureaucracy reflect the modern notions that pervade Areological discourse, thereby promoting a colonial gaze of Mars. Modernity represents a way of seeing Mars that has been pushed upon us by history, eliminating alternate narratives of place through the nonnative practice of modern thinking.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:honorstheses1990-2015-1589 |
| Date | 01 January 2006 |
| Creators | Jerkins, Jae |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | HIM 1990-2015 |
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