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- Convenors:
-
Branwen Spector
(University College London)
Yara Sa'di-Ibraheem
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- Format:
- Panel
- Transfers:
- Open for transfers
Short Abstract:
In this panel, we explore: How might the infrastructural turn in anthropology engage with these complexities, and how can we develop methodologies to study infrastructure "in motion"— as something evolving in response to both settler-colonial pressures and Indigenous resistance?
Long Abstract:
Recent anthropological research has examined the multifaceted roles of infrastructure in societies, focusing on how it operates beyond technical functions. In colonial contexts, research unveils how infrastructure has historically been designed to create material and symbolic advantages for settlers while reinforcing divisions between settler and native spaces. This pattern continues to influence post-colonial landscapes, where infrastructures often serve as racialized boundaries that limit Indigenous movement and control their access to space and time. The destruction or neglect of indigenous infrastructure further perpetuates colonial dependency, trapping native populations in economic subordination. In settler-colonial regimes, however, the aim is not just to exploit or manage Indigenous populations, but to “replace” them, expanding the regime’s territory, leading to more complex infrastructural dynamics and blurred boundaries between settler and native spaces. This fluidity complicates the notion of strict segregation and creates sites of interaction, contestation, and exchange that challenge the dominant colonial order. It also creates opportunities for creativity and resistance in unique forms that exploit or appropriate the infrastructure’s original intention.
By examining infrastructure through this dynamic lens, we can better understand the entangled processes that shape settler-colonial landscapes and explore how Indigenous communities navigate, resist, or reconfigure these spaces in everyday life. In this panel, we invite anthropologists working in settler colonial contexts to join us in exploring: How might the infrastructural turn in anthropology engage with these complexities, and how can we develop methodologies to study infrastructure "in motion"— as something evolving in response to both settler-colonial pressures and Indigenous resistance?
Accepted papers:
Paper short abstract:
The text grapples with how the Tamazunchale Power Plant, as a foreign Spanish-owned energy infrastructure participates to the assimilation of the Nauhatl of the Huasteca Potosina. Is settler colonialism only about settlement of the foreigners, or can things such energetic infrastructures settle?
Paper long abstract:
Amidst the recent rise of Latin American authors attempting to grapple with the notion of settle colonialism in the Americas, this paper explores the benefits of stretching such a concept to consider ongoing processes of annihilation and assimilation of the Nauhatl indigenous people of the Huasteca Potosina. Despite Mexico not being generally treated as a case of Settler Colonialism, the text grapples specifically with how the Combined Cycle Thermoelectric (CCT) Power Plant of Tamazunchale, as a foreign Spanish-owned energy infrastructure, participates in agricultural, environmental and cultural changes. Retrieving and seeking contextual clarity amidst long standing debates, we ask: is settler colonialism only about explicit erasure of the natives and settlement of the foreigners, or can things such as energetic infrastructures and related modes of living settle? Drawing from fieldwork data gathered in and around Tamazunchale’s CCT, the paper argues that energy infrastructure alters socio-spatial relations around itself, generating both forms of assimilation and annihilation worthy of being considered from a settler colonialism perspective.
Paper short abstract:
A look at informal infrastructures of queer erotics and their disappearances in urban landscapes as they relate to trans masculine desires in Germany, America, and South Africa.
Paper long abstract:
This article proposes a theory of “trans infrastructuralism.” Through narrative and phenomenological description, trans infrastructures illuminate the enabling conditions for emergent, material, and intersubjective forms trans masculine desire. We argue that the reproduction of intimate affects remains paradoxically obscured by the physical presence of public infrastructure. This is paradoxical because being intimate or maintaining intimate queer loving located an interstitial relation that contradicted the intended uses of public works. The odd intensities that emerge in the trans ordinary can therefore range – from techno-social objects that comprise trans people who seek gender-affirming medical care to the important spatial relations that serve to propel new socialities. This article redescribes these semi-public, and public geographies, as necessary heterotopias. This is a critical redescription of contemporary life for trans people.
Paper short abstract:
Festivals in Jerusalem’s Old City rattle sociopolitical power dynamics and encourage exclusion. Focusing on the Jerusalem Light Festival (2009–2019), I use interviews, media, and performative analysis to demonstrate how performance art both shapes and is shaped by a contested public space.
Paper long abstract:
“Territoriality is settler colonialism’s specific, irreducible element,” determines Wolfe (2006), pointing toward the importance of spatiality and public space in settler-colonial projects. Systems of infrastructure embedded within the public sphere are widely researched in the settler-colonial context, yet the cultural infrastructure is rarely acknowledged. This paper will address the use of large-scale artistic events in the Old City of Jerusalem, which serve as focal points for internal and international discourse concerning socio-political power dynamics in Palestine.
Over the past two decades, as part of its touristic activity, the Old City has hosted dozens of music, theatre, and performance art festivals, such as the Jerusalem Light Festival (JLF). Israeli municipal institutions developed these mass events to showcase the city’s ancient history with a welcoming international character. From its inception in 2009 until 2019, the JLF attracted tens of thousands of local and global visitors. It offered illuminated pathways within and around the Old City, surrounded by light installations, projections, lit sculptures, and light-decorated performers. Yet local Palestinian residents’ participation in the festivals was not always voluntary, collaborative, or consensual. These festivals often symbolise domination, occupation, and repression in public and private spaces (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2016).
This paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork, social media, and performative analysis of selected exhibits. It delves into the intricacies of artistic events in a contested public space and asks, what is the role of performative art events in conflict zones? How do large-scale artistic events shape power dynamics in Jerusalem’s public space?