Infrastructures of liberal life: From modernity and progress to resilience and ruins

Abstract

Abstract Whereas until recently, the topic of infrastructure was practically invisible, studies of the spaces, landscapes, and geographies of infrastructure now abound, and for many critical thinkers, infrastructure has become perhaps the political question of the Anthropocene. This review traces two distinct but related paradigms of liberal governmentality and infrastructure, the first, modern infrastructure and its project of mastery and order, and the second, contemporary paradigm of infrastructures of resilience, ruins, and survival. Through this review, I also trace a story of the crisis or dislocations of liberal thought and practice underway as what we now refer to as the Anthropocene. Exploring this crisis and its responses through the lens of infrastructure, I suggest, offers new ideas for other ways to move forward amidst the splinters of the present, and I conclude with some remarks on the political possibilities inherent in both critical infrastructure studies and resilient infrastructures themselves.