Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Spaceport blues - Kourou and Soyuz

I've just finished writing a paper for Archaeologies, the journal of the World Archaeological Congress. The issue, edited by Marcia Bezerra, is called "Archaeologists without borders" and I decided to write about my experiences in Kourou.

This wasn't easy to do. I wanted to convey something about my emotions, the feeling that I had been suddenly precipitated into an unstable situation where I couldn't predict the results of words or actions. This kind of stuff doesn't always work well in academic writing (and, I never want to sound too postmodern - it makes my scientist's soul cringe). But the evolution of my understanding of Kourou was inextricably linked with certain people, discussions, places. Making a coherent, and yet not wanky, narrative out of it was like pulling teeth. Well, the teeth were duly pulled and I think I like how it's turned out.

No idea how long the article will take to be published. I haven't tackled the abstract yet - perhaps I will post it when finished.

Did I actually describe what happened in Kourou in the blog?



1 comment:

  1. I think you hinted strongly at the different ways people were being affected by the space program according to whether they were on the inside or the outside of the site, but it wasn't a graphic description.

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