Cosmographies for an Anthropocene: Meteorites, Dark Skies and Film

In recent decades, the emergence and popularisation of Anthropocene thinking has transformed understandings of the Earth and led to debates surrounding related boundaries and thresholds. At the same time, there is a growing recognition that the everyday workings of Western society are increasingly entangled with outer space. Despite this, geographical work on outer space remains marginal and there is a concern that human geography is falling behind other social sciences in addressing this development, leading to calls for a (re)integration of cosmography into the discipline. Situated at the intersection of these recent theoretical developments, this thesis investigates relationships between humans and outer space, understanding these contemporary connections within a range of deep pasts and possible futures. The underlying concerns of this thesis are channelled through three lines of empirical inquiry and a mixed methods approach embedded in a new materialist methodology. These lines of inquiry are deployed through an ethnographic engagement with the field of meteoritics, creative practice fieldwork in Dark Sky Parks and an analysis of fantastical films. Accordingly, this thesis produces novel interdisciplinary insights: highlighting points of contact between human life and extraterrestrial matter; fostering linkages to astronomical phenomena through amateur astrophotography; and demonstrating culture's capacity to shape popular perceptions of the cosmos. Through these understudied avenues unfolds a critical engagement with matter on a cosmical scale, unpacking tensions that exist at the boundaries of human and inhuman, planet and outer space, and self and cosmos. Ultimately, this thesis works to unsettle conventional understandings of our planetary condition, sheds light on the interrelatedness of human and cosmos, and reflects upon the existential implications of life on a finite world in an entropic universe.