More-than-terrestrial diplomacy: modular politics of the International Space Station

This thesis conceptualises the International Space Station (ISS) as a more-than- terrestrial diplomatic assemblage. It explores the partnership between the United States (US) and Russia in outer space by tracing the relationship back to the early days of the space age and following its emergence from allusions to cooperation to the materialisation on the ISS. This research is the result of a multi-year digital archival investigation of the role of materials on the ISS in facilitating diplomacy and instances where they become diplomatic actants. As a momentous technical and political achievement, the ISS has become a crucial focus for navigating diplomatic relations between the US and Russia from the end of the Cold War to ongoing terrestrial geopolitical tensions between the two space powers. In this thesis I pay particular attention to the ISS’s modularity, the legal frameworks, and affective atmosphere. As a continuously inhabited, interdependent, and segmented structure enabled by Cold War legacies and post-Soviet pragmatism, the ISS allows cooperation without consensus—a crucial capability when navigating competing political interests. The main contributions of this research centre on the excavation of the historical legacy of US-Russian space diplomacy as reflected in the traces of memos, agreements, and technical reports within digital archives. The research considers how the context of outer space challenges terrestrial diplomatic relations by identifying how the affective atmosphere of outer space deterritorialises state assemblages, such as the US and Russia, and reterritorialises them through the ISS. I also consider the methodological position of the ’armchair geographer’ as generative of rich empirical insights which contribute to debates on digital geography and awareness of the environmental impact of academic research.