Elke Krasny » Feminist Infrastructural Critique: Life-Affirming Practices Against Capital

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Infrastructure is the condition of modern life. The spread of racial capitalism and colonial patriarchy relied on railroads, waterways, dams, sanitation, sewage, power lines, or phone lines and the economies of extraction and labor supporting them. Infrastructure is the facilities and the systems of public works, often operated by the state and, at the same time, essential for cross-border or trans-boundary connectivity. Traditional modern infrastructures have been joined, and transformed, by digital infrastructures and given rise to new forms of digital and platform capitalism. Terms like green infrastructure or blue infrastructure make understood how so-called natural resources are seen as ecosystem services for carbon storage or pollution removal. Social infrastructure refers to facilities that support social services including housing, healthcare, and education. Infrastructure is ubiquitous, essential, and often invisible. Infrastructure requires permanent maintenance, repair, and care.