Infrastructural brutalism : art and the necropolitics of infrastructure / Michael Truscello.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Truscello, Michael, author.

Series:

Infrastructures series.

Infrastructures

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Landscapes in art.

Landscapes--Symbolic aspects.

Landscapes.

Infrastructure (Economics).

Arts and society.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (287 pages).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge The MIT Press 2020

Cambridge : The MIT Press, 2020.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"Infrastructural Brutalism explores the necropolitics of infrastructure through the lens of artistic media: "drowned town" literature, road movies, energy landscape photography, and "death train" narratives. How does American "drowned town" literature, from Mud on the Stars to Sugaree Rising, contribute to the social erasure of Indigeneity? How does road movie scholarship ignore the materiality of the road in favor of modes of travel? How is agency depicted in the energy landscape photography of oil pipelines and coal-powered reactors? How do the novels and films about death trains, from the historical trains of African colonization and the Holocaust to fictional trains such as Snowpiercer and Train to Busan, connect infrastructure with necropower? While most examples are from North American literature, film, and photography, the book also discusses media from around the world in terms of the necropolitical valences of infrastructure.

Contents:

Introduction : The paver of modern life

Drowned town fiction : the poetics of large dams

The materiality of the road in the "road movie"

Oil and photography

Death train narratives

Conclusion : Infrastructural brutalism and brisantic politics.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

ISBN:

0-262-35873-5

0-262-35872-7

OCLC:

1190716384