What's 'affective infrastructure'? Kai Bosworth

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Kai Bosworth

What is 'Affective Infrastructure'?

Muhammad Hafeez ur Rehman ENG-657

• INVASIVE INFRASTRUCTURE & PROMISE OF DEVELOPMENT-The Promise of Infrastructure by Anand, et al.
• PROMGRAMMED INATTENTION TOWARDS PEOPLE'S STRUCTURE OF FEELINGS-Ordinary Lives: Studies in the Everyday by Ben Highmore
• AFFECT AS A SITE OF POLITICS-Rethinking Vulnerability & Resistance by Judith Butler
• GLOBAL SOUTH AND INFRASTRUCTURAL GLITCHES/TROUBLING TIMES-"The Commons" by Lauren Berlant

• DOMINANT NARRATIVE AND VALIDITY OF SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE

Why do 'affective infrastructure' or the feelings associated with Infrastructure matter for a post/colonial reading of a text?

some scholars use the concept to draw our attention to the emotions produced by concrete infrastructure systems.scholars have sought to locate how affect might condition forms of political organization.(54)

Harvey & Knox: infrastructural systems of all types are involved in producing a full range of complex affective responses.Appel et. al: Infrastructures excite affects and sentiment’ (56)

Brian Larkin: ‘the aesthetic dimension of infrastructure (rather than its technical one)’ is the ‘dominant’ mode through which infrastructure appears. (56)

• The concept of ‘affective infrastructure’ is positioned in an in-between zone. It indicates a renewed attention to the mediation, layering, alienation, and organization of systems and subjects along certain pathways potentially aligned with or in opposition to the conditions of capitalist political economy.(55)

Definition of Affective Infrastructure

Key Points of the Article

Review of Scholarly Literature on Affect & Infrastructure

Review of Scholarly Literature on Affect & Infrastructure

Review of Scholarly Literature on Affect & Infrastructure

Henderson: the felt affects of infrastructure are shaped by spatial histories, social positionings, and claims ‘about what is properly human’ (56)

• Henderson: The concept of ‘affective infrastructure’ can be understood as a response to calls to better account for ‘how specific emotions are spatialized and (re)produced across time’ (56)

(Ramakrishnan et al: The specific temporalities of infrastructure systems – expectation, repetition, decay, repair, maintenance, and everydayness – are generative of specific kinds of affects, such as despair, frustration, or hope (56)

• Carse & Kneas: The production of infrastructure hinges on a kind of ‘promise’ of delivery, whether such futural discourse or the technical system itself is developmental, imaginary, uncertain, or unfulfilled (56)

Review of Scholarly Literature on Affect & Infrastructure

Key Points of the Article

Review of Scholarly Literature on Affect & Infrastructure

Review of Scholarly Literature on Affect & Infrastructure

Review of Scholarly Literature on Affect & Infrastructure

Thrift (2004) suggests that affect is becoming "engineered," akin to networks of pipes and cables that structure urban life. This idea introduces the notion that affect is not just a spontaneous, natural phenomenon but can be deliberately shaped and mediated by infrastructure, creating new emotional geographies and histories.

Affect as Engineered and Technologized

Infrastructures of Affect/Pipeline Populism/Activism

Affective infrastructures refer to the ways emotions circulate and structure collective experiences, shaping political outcomes and movements.A key idea in this discussion is the Spinozist notion of affect: "partial consciousness of a body's ‘power of acting’" that is transformed by encounters, either increasing or diminishing this power (Spinoza, 1985: 493).

Contemporay Right Wing Politics Anderson and Secor argue that collective affects are critical for the emergence of these movements, as they capture and amplify mass desires and insecurities through leaders, media, and organizations (2022: 2). Social media platforms are crucial in this process because they act as affective infrastructures, fostering heightened emotional responses such as anger and frustration, which are effectively harnessed by right-wing political movements.Alternate View About Political Organization of SocialityLauren Berlant: Infrastructure refers to the dynamic, living mediation and patterning of social forms – including tangible things like roads and bridges, as well as intangible systems like norms and social practices. It's about the movement that organizes life, rather than static entities. She theorizes that crises (Glitches) reveal the failures of existing infrastructures to sustain social life, thereby opening up spaces for imagining and enacting alternative forms of social organization. (The Commons: Infrastructures of the Troubling Times by Lauren Berlant)

Contemporary Politics & Affective Infrastructure

Some groups channel the anger from such alienation into constructive political efforts to enhance everyday life infrastructure, promoting collective flourishing rather than alienation.

Oil workers in Nigeria face environmental harm and health risks, while the profits often go to elites or foreign corporations. Meanwhile, consumers in Norway enjoy cheap energy but remain disconnected from the labor and environmental damage behind it.

Masked Relationship: For instance, oil workers in Nigeria may extract oil that is consumed by people in Norway. This interconnection creates dependencies—workers in one part of the world are linked to consumers in another.

Political-Affective Organization

Alienation and Uneven Power

Transindividual Interactions and Dependencies

Technical Alienation & Political-Affective Organization

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Temporal Shifts of Pre/Post-Pipeline Niger Delta

Spatialy History & Affect

• "We left, we headed northwards, we've lived in five different places now, but always we've had move. We are looking for a place where we can live in peace" (45).

Chief Ibiram's Statement/Example of Solastalgia

Invasive Oil Infrastructure & Affect in Habila's Oil on Water

Overlooks the affective aspect of 'people as infrastructure.Lacks discussion on the importance of affect.Misses Judith Butler’s 'Rethinking Vulnerability and Resistance.

• Love the way with which the article puts all the available literature on affect and Infrastructure in conversation
• Examples of affective infrastructure are compelling
• Transindividual Interactions & Infrastructure

Strengths

Strengths & Weaknesses

Weaknesses

In What ways do Helon Habila's rhetorical affects in Oil on Water mobilize environmental activism by evoking emotional responses in readers regarding the impacts of pipleline infrastructure on the Niger Delta?How do the spiritual movement led by the professor in Helon Habila's Oil on Water and the militant group MEND compare in terms of political affective organization? Are they transformative responses to systemic issues, or simply alternative modes of social organization arising from oppression in the Niger Delta?How does Kai Bosworth’s article on affective infrastructure relate to the dynamics of pipeline populism and the resistance of Indigenous communities in North America against extractive projects?

Discussion Questions

Anand, Nikhil, et al. The Promise of Infrastructure. Duke UP, 2018.Berlant, Lauren. "The commons: Infrastructures for troubling times*." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, vol. 34, no. 3, 2016, pp. 393-419. Bosworth, Kai. "What is ‘affective infrastructure’?" Dialogues in Human Geography, vol. 13, no. 1, 2022, pp. 54-72. Highmore, Ben. Ordinary Lives: Studies in the Everyday. Routledge, 2010. Johnson, Adriana M., and Daniel Nemser. "Introduction." Social Text, vol. 40, no. 4, 2022, pp. 1-16.

References

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