Infrastructural Brutalism
Author: Truscello, Michael
ISBN: 9780262539043
Publisher: RANDOM HOUSE US
Year first published: 17 Nov 2020
Pages: 376
Format: Paperback / softback
How "drowned town" literature, road movies, energy landscape photography, and "death train" narratives represent the brutality of industrial infrastructures.BR>BR>b>How "drowned town" literature, road movies, energy landscape photography, and "death train" narratives represent the brutality of industrial infrastructures./b>p>In this book, Michael Truscello looks at the industrial infrastructure not as an invisible system of connectivity and mobility that keeps capitalism humming in the background but as a manufactured miasma of despair, toxicity, and death. Truscello terms this "infrastructural brutalism"-a formulation that not only alludes to the historical nexus of infrastructure and the concrete aesthetic of Brutalist architecture but also describes the ecological, political, and psychological brutality of industrial infrastructures. /p>p>Truscello explores the necropolitics of infrastructure-how infrastructure determines who may live and who must die-through the lens of artistic media. He examines the white settler nostalgia of "drowned town" fiction written after the Tennessee Valley Authority flooded rural areas for hydroelectric projects; argues that the road movie represents a struggle with liberal governmentality; considers the ruins of oil capitalism, as seen in photographic landscapes of postindustrial waste; and offers an account of "death train narratives" ranging from the history of the Holocaust to postapocalyptic fiction. Finally, he calls for "brisantic politics," a culture of unmaking that is capable of slowing the advance of capitalist suicide. "Brisance" refers to the shattering effect of an explosive, but Truscello uses the term to signal a variety of practices for defeating infrastructural power. Brisantic politics, he warns, would require a reorientation of radical politics toward infrastructure, sabotage, and cascading destruction in an interconnected world./p>
ISBN: 9780262539043
Publisher: RANDOM HOUSE US
Year first published: 17 Nov 2020
Pages: 376
Format: Paperback / softback
How "drowned town" literature, road movies, energy landscape photography, and "death train" narratives represent the brutality of industrial infrastructures.BR>BR>b>How "drowned town" literature, road movies, energy landscape photography, and "death train" narratives represent the brutality of industrial infrastructures./b>p>In this book, Michael Truscello looks at the industrial infrastructure not as an invisible system of connectivity and mobility that keeps capitalism humming in the background but as a manufactured miasma of despair, toxicity, and death. Truscello terms this "infrastructural brutalism"-a formulation that not only alludes to the historical nexus of infrastructure and the concrete aesthetic of Brutalist architecture but also describes the ecological, political, and psychological brutality of industrial infrastructures. /p>p>Truscello explores the necropolitics of infrastructure-how infrastructure determines who may live and who must die-through the lens of artistic media. He examines the white settler nostalgia of "drowned town" fiction written after the Tennessee Valley Authority flooded rural areas for hydroelectric projects; argues that the road movie represents a struggle with liberal governmentality; considers the ruins of oil capitalism, as seen in photographic landscapes of postindustrial waste; and offers an account of "death train narratives" ranging from the history of the Holocaust to postapocalyptic fiction. Finally, he calls for "brisantic politics," a culture of unmaking that is capable of slowing the advance of capitalist suicide. "Brisance" refers to the shattering effect of an explosive, but Truscello uses the term to signal a variety of practices for defeating infrastructural power. Brisantic politics, he warns, would require a reorientation of radical politics toward infrastructure, sabotage, and cascading destruction in an interconnected world./p>
