“Se potessi”. Tecnoscienze, esplorazioni e ideologie

The conference “Annetterei i pianeti se potessi” (“I would annex the planets if I could”) intends to study the relationships between scientific explorations and political imperialism from different perspectives. The aim is to raise questions about power relations between colonizers and colonized people and between human societies, environments, and non-human agents. By introducing the proceedings, this essay proposes to frame these research in the disciplinary sectors of the history of knowledge, extinction studies, and animal studies to outline a history of the knowledge and ignorance involving all the stakeholders touched by the processes of geopolitical annexation. What emerges is a complex picture characterized by a problematic definition of knowledge within centerperiphery dynamics on which many research fronts are still open