The body as infrastructure

Andueza, L., Davis, A., Loftus, A. and Schling, H. (2021) The body as infrastructure. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 4(3), pp. 799-817. (doi: 10.1177/2514848620937231)

[img] Text
281249.pdf - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

300kB

Abstract

In this paper, we conceptualise the human body as infrastructure, asking what kind of infrastructure it currently is and what kind of infrastructure it could be. We therefore tease out the historically and geographically specific ways in which human bodies have been (re)produced as infrastructure, emphasising the violence of abstraction in capitalist modernity that transforms the productive body into a technology of calorific inputs and outputs. Nevertheless, through demystifying abstract labour we point to the relations of (re)production (needed for the body’s ongoing repair) and the metabolic processes (responsible for both decay and repair) that are subsumed within a broader capitalist system of accumulation. In so doing, we turn to the immanent contradictions and struggles that resist the body’s production as a one-sided technology of circulation and through which it is, and can become, an infrastructure for life and sociality.

Item Type:Articles
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Schling, Dr Hannah
Authors: Andueza, L., Davis, A., Loftus, A., and Schling, H.
College/School:College of Science and Engineering > School of Geographical and Earth Sciences
Journal Name:Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space
Publisher:SAGE Publications
ISSN:2514-8486
ISSN (Online):2514-8494
Published Online:06 July 2020
Copyright Holders:Copyright © 2022 The Authors
First Published:First published in Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 4(3):799–817
Publisher Policy:Reproduced under a Creative Commons License

University Staff: Request a correction | Enlighten Editors: Update this record