Imagining Infrastructure: Agency, Artefact, and the Rise of the Neo-human Subject
The field of infrastructure studies lies at a critical juncture marked by novel kinds of logistical interfaces, new configurations of agency, and enduring neo-Foucauldian concerns with the shifting contours of the human subject. In this presentation I develop a conceptual synthesis between four analytical perspectives: an emphasis on infrastructure as a set of cultural and material artefacts marked by diverse modes of enquiry; the co-evolutionary dynamics of infrastructure networks in relation to the corporeal vulnerabilities of urban space; the emergence of successive socio-technical imaginaries that connect with the metonymic or ideological significance of urban infrastructure; and the significance of infrastructure as an epistemological vantage point for embodied encounters with urban space. I show how the question of infrastructure intersects with a series of wider debates over agency, subjectivity, and the rise of algorithmic governmentalities. I emphasize the value of creative practice as a vibrant alternative to creeping forms of analytical modularity and neo-positivist epistemological elision.
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Figure details: Charlotte Posenenske, Vierkantrohre Serie D (Square tubes series D) (1967), exhibited at Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 2024. Photo by Matthew Gandy.