Prof. Christopher Breu (Illinois State University)
June 12, 2018, 6-8 p.m., P 103 (Philosophicum)
This talk draws upon biopolitical theory and Marxist theory to reinvigorate an economic, social, technological, and ecological conception of infrastructure. Given the recent material turn in critical theory, it is high time to reconsider the Marxist distinction between infrastructure and superstructure. If, during the cultural turn, the superstructure was privileged to the point of an almost complete effacement of the infrastructure (or base), in our own moment of proliferating infrastructures, biopolitical production, and ecological crisis, the concept of the infrastructure needs to be both affirmed and retheorized. This talk begins this work.
Christopher Breu is Professor of English at Illinois State University, USA.
You can find the event poster here.