ABSTRACT
Earthly ruptures such as climate change and accelerating patterns of extinction do not simply demand critiques of IR and global politics – they directly enact these critiques by exposing enormous gaps between theory, earth and the cosmos. Through their diverse manifestations, they force IR and global theory to confront two conditions: radical finitude, or the possibility of total negation; and radical infinitude, or futures that exceed the temporal dimensions of Western thought. Both of these conditions challenge foundational concepts of IR and global theory, including survival, security sovereignty and dominant conceptions of human agency. Engaging with the phenomena of ‘mass extinction’ and ‘outer space colonization’, this chapter argues that in order to address the most pressing contemporary issues, IR and global theory need to confront the cosmos that challenge their fundamental bases.
