Unfathomable harm: Absurdist space criminology, black hole energy extraction, and reality harms

This paper develops an absurdist space criminology of black holes as future sites of energy extraction with unfathomable harmful consequences. In doing so, it reacts to space criminology that has so far engaged mainly with harmful and criminal human activity in outer space resulting from space expansionism. I argue that space criminological thought must also grapple with harm by cosmic phenomena themselves (especially if amplified or caused by human interventions). Black holes, long a riddle in nature yet increasingly considered as speculative sources of limitless energy, will serve as an illustrative and speculative case. Their spacetime-bending qualities expose the human limits of space criminological (including zemiological) comprehension, especially because their potential exploitation for energy, as currently studied in astrophysics, could result in existential and structural harms that transcend currently conventional as well as critical criminological categories. Drawing on Camus’ absurdism, this article situates black holes not only as destructive but as provocations to space criminology as an emergent field, challenging its task to rethink harm, risk, and responsibility at cosmic and often unfathomable scales. The analysis focuses on two forms of black hole (extraction) harms, introduced as reality harms: 1) spaghettification of entities and 2) harms to spacetime, entailing the destabilisation of physical laws and temporal experience. In doing so, the paper both critiques the anthropocentric fallacy residing within space criminology, while expanding its imagination into realms where meaning-making and harm collide with the unfathomable.