Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the social energies that are created as we wait in traffic jams.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the creative energies of the traffic jams that form and transform the urban spaces of the crammed megacity Dhaka. I focus on the types of sociality that are produced by the jam. Mapping these through the languages that are produced in and about the jam, I argue that jam is a singular utterance, the coming into being of an unstable and transient socio-material form, erupting out of the contours of the urban space through a collective slowing down.