Critical Infrastructure

3 Credits.

As Lauren Berlant notes, any fantasies of moving unimpeded in the world is shattered when we find ourselves unavoidably in relation to one another, entangled with one another’s everyday life. Broadly construed, ‘infrastructure’ is the amorphous and dynamic web of elements that governs the way we navigate this condition; it is the tissue that connects places, bodies, emotions, and communities. As such, it constitutes much of what makes our lives livable and/or unbearable. This seminar explores the ways in which a capaciously interpreted concept of infrastructure(s): mediates social life; reflects, asserts, and reifies power relations; and reproduces, amplifies, or mitigates conditions of inequality and violence. We will critically analyze physical, social, and personal infrastructures and reflect on their interconnected relations. We will also speculatively theorize the construction of ‘counter-infrastructures’ that might rework these ambivalent conditions of attachment and violence. Concepts to be considered will include redlining, bike paths, housing, libraries, parks, transit, architecture, biopolitics, mutual aid, care of the self, and mindfulness.