‘Water is life’: Postcolonial States, Fugitive Infrastructures, Mourning Ancestors
Topics: Black Geographies
, Caribbean Geographies
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Keywords: informality, infrastructure
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 61
Authors:
Rachel Goffe, University of Toronto
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Abstract
According to Jamaican public policy documents, one of the defining features of informal settlements is their inadequacy of infrastructure. In the disjuncture between the racial capitalist state and those in unauthorized possession of land, flows of water are emblematic of the production of uneven development (to the point of crisis) but also the potential of ‘fugitive infrastructures’ (Cowen 2017). For some of the Jamaicans who have durable possession of land unsanctioned by law, water is all around: surface water, ground water, potable water, storm water, sea water, river water, rain water. This presence is promising, yet tricky—technically, politically, affectively, temporally.
Others have examined water infrastructure as productive of the politics of postcolonial state formation (Anand 2017), premature death in settler states (Ranganathan 2016) and of colonial landscapes and their negation (da Cunha and Mathur 2006). This paper takes up water as the stubborn but fluid residue of affective investments: in the local developmentalist state and, in the livity of generational place-making. Reading water’s multiple presences as the sedimentation of different ancestors, I ask what role mourning may play in recollecting the capacity to turn towards the future.
‘Water is life’: Postcolonial States, Fugitive Infrastructures, Mourning Ancestors
Category
Virtual Paper Abstract
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