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<p>This article develops the figure of the <i>astro sacer</i> as an extraterrestrial reformulation of <i>homo sacer</i>, describing a subject constituted within artificial off-Earth environments through juridical inclusion, technological mediation, and existential exposure, yet deprived of the conditions necessary for fully political and symbolic worldhood. It argues that outer space should not be understood simply as a hostile or exceptional domain, but as a pathological milieu that generates its own norms, meanings, and forms of life under conditions of extreme practical constraint. A central claim of the article is that extra-terrestrial habitats are not merely environments occupied by human beings, but constitutive extensions of life itself. In orbital and planetary settings, biological existence, technical systems, and architecture become so tightly interdependent that the failure of the habitat is indistinguishable from the death of the subject it sustains. Under these conditions, mimetic engagement does not disappear but is reoriented toward alignment, optimisation, and system maintenance, producing what the article terms a <i>negentropic mimetic impulse</i>. Approaching outer space law as a semiotic regime rather than a purely doctrinal system, the article argues that property and rights persist beyond Earth only in unstable form, since they presuppose a separation between subject and environment no longer available under extraterrestrial conditions. The article, therefore, offers a diagnostic account of worldlessness as a legal, architectural, and symbolic condition intrinsic to life beyond Earth.</p>

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Astro Sacer and the Negentropic Mimetic Impulse

  • 期刊论文

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  • 发表日期：

    2026年4月11日

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  • Craig McCormack

摘要

This article develops the figure of the astro sacer as an extraterrestrial reformulation of homo sacer, describing a subject constituted within artificial off-Earth environments through juridical inclusion, technological mediation, and existential exposure, yet deprived of the conditions necessary for fully political and symbolic worldhood. It argues that outer space should not be understood simply as a hostile or exceptional domain, but as a pathological milieu that generates its own norms, meanings, and forms of life under conditions of extreme practical constraint. A central claim of the article is that extra-terrestrial habitats are not merely environments occupied by human beings, but constitutive extensions of life itself. In orbital and planetary settings, biological existence, technical systems, and architecture become so tightly interdependent that the failure of the habitat is indistinguishable from the death of the subject it sustains. Under these conditions, mimetic engagement does not disappear but is reoriented toward alignment, optimisation, and system maintenance, producing what the article terms a negentropic mimetic impulse. Approaching outer space law as a semiotic regime rather than a purely doctrinal system, the article argues that property and rights persist beyond Earth only in unstable form, since they presuppose a separation between subject and environment no longer available under extraterrestrial conditions. The article, therefore, offers a diagnostic account of worldlessness as a legal, architectural, and symbolic condition intrinsic to life beyond Earth.