Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on cockroaches in Bucharest(RO) examining their infrastructural roles. By analyzing how pests like cockroaches transgress and redefine geographic, legal, and cultural boundaries, I aim to explore their co-evolution, co-history, and co-constitution with urban environments.

Paper long abstract:

This study approaches cockroaches not merely as research objects but as knowledge assemblages that co-participate in the production of urban understanding. By studying how residents of Bucharest navigate life with cockroaches, I aim to uncover everyday practices that reveal deeper human-animal relations. I am looking at urban ecologies and infrastructures as 'critical zones'—spaces where various natural, biological, and technological forces interact in a fragile and dynamic way, with the capacity to trigger significant changes in the structure and stability of systems.

I follow the path of the cockroach through the underground infrastructure of Bucharest, moving through sewage systems, pipes, waste areas, surviving bursts of disinsection, entering the building's basement and climbing into people's apartments. Alongside the cockroach's journey, I also examine the movements of people. How we move from apartment to apartment because of cockroaches, and who has the privilege to do so - because although, in theory, we are equally exposed, pests tend to be abundant in the poorest and most crowded urban neighborhoods.

Additionally, I am also looking at the broader “movements” triggered by cockroaches, such as the infrastructure associated with their presence in cities, including the legal and regulatory issues governing when and how cockroaches should be controlled, the use of chemical substances, the effects of cockroach infestations on our relationships with others, and the role of the state in the proliferation and control of cockroach populations.