Alienation Economies: Value Regimes, Astrophysical Precarity, and Cosmic Labour of Astronomers in Central Asia

This paper explores the values and visual work cultures involved in the valuation of cosmic phenomena and the night sky in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and other interconnected elsewheres. The study interweaves case studies of institutional astrophysicists and professional astronomical observers, who conduct their work in observatories, with the practices and narratives of precarious “street” astronomers, who engage as entertainers and grassroots educators in the streets and town squares of the cities across Central Asia, such as Bishkek and Almaty. The paper examines the value regimes attributed to the night sky in the context of technoscientific capitalism, post-Soviet indeterminacy, neocolonial resource extraction, and the commercialization of the dark sky commons. Drawing on conceptions of the "alien" in the works of Chingiz Aitmatov, Denise Ferreira da Silva, the narratives of my interlocutors, as well as Nick Land's notion of capital as alien intelligence—a self-constructing force that co-opts human agency to drive its own evolution—the analysis considers how both institutional and street astronomers navigate and appropriate technocapitalist alienation and its forces of un-commoning. The paper argues that both groups play a crucial role in the construction of these emerging alien technocapitalist forces, while also creating opportunities to reframe alienation itself. Building on Moten and Harney's concept of the fugitive "undercommons," this paper explores how the labour of these astronomers cultivates alternative ways of valuing the darkness of the night sky; how the generative alienation of astrophysical precarity transcends the logic of technoscientific resourcification.