Desire and Denial: On Constructing Contesting Infrastructures

Ambivalent InfrastructuresInfrastructures are not just technical systems but cultural and political orders that stabilize and transform societal processes. Following Brian Larkin’s study “The Politicsand Poetics of Infrastructure”, the writings collected in Desire and Denial conceive ofinfrastructures as material manifestations of symbolic and economic projects andefforts to build political power. They embody collective desires—for mobility, safety,control, or modernization, among other things—that not only structure planningprocesses, but also constitute normative ideas about the future.Meanwhile, infrastructures operate on the basis of denial: by systemically conceal-ing, say, environmental devastation, social inequality, political exclusion, and colonialcontinuities. As Donna Haraway already underscored in the late 1980s, techno-scientific orders are premised on stories of objectivity and innocence—narrative patternsthat also inform the planning and legitimation of infrastructures and the visions of thefuture they imply.The contributions explore this complex set of tensions, reading infrastructures as notjust part of the built environment, but also politically contested, culturally appropriated, and symbolically fraught scenes of social conflict.