Elevator Pitch. Gratitude for Infrastructure, and Beyond
Time
Wednesday, 29. June 2022
18:00 - 20:00
Location
Konzil Building, Hafenstr. 2, Konstanz
Organizer
Centre for Cultural Inquiry (ZKF), Research Initiative "Rethinking Infrastructure: Cultural Perspectives"
Speaker:
Prof. Bruce Robbins, Columbia University, New York
Public Keynote as a part of the Opening conference of the Centre for Cultural Inquiry / ZKF
Program
18.00-18.30
Opening remarks
Christina Wald (Centre for Cultural Inquiry / ZKF)
Kirsten Mahlke + Daniel König (Research Initiative Rethinking Infrastructure: Cultural Perspectives)
18.30
Elevator Pitch. Gratitude for Infrastructure, and Beyond
Bruce Robbins (Columbia University, New York)
followed by discussion and reception
Moderator: Timo Müller (University of Konstanz)
The imagined destruction of existing infrastructure, as in elevator accidents and the end-of-the-world scenarios of disaster films, always expresses a desire. But it often also invites gratitude for the infrastructure whose loss we are witnessing. The neoliberal privatization of public goods, which pushes toward radical individualism and sometimes even survivalism, is an argument in favor of the invitation to be grateful for what we have. But to be content with gratitude would mean accepting an impoverished, lukewarm sense of the public and the possibilities of the public good. At its best, as in Colson Whitehead and Kazuo Ishiguro, infrastructural fiction stretches that sense of the public.