(Re)narrating the societal cyborg: a definition of infrastructure, an interrogation of integration

The call for this special issue invites us to consider “integrated infrastructure as a response to climate change”. In doing so, it recapitulates a normative narrative wherein human beings play the protagonist in a struggle against climate change in the antagonistic role, and where infrastructure – integrated or otherwise – is the instrument of human action against it.

This narrative raises important questions, some of which are definitive: what exactly do we mean when we say “infrastructure”? What does it mean for an infrastructure to be “integrated”? And is the integration of infrastructure so defined desirable, or even achievable? It also begs a further question, namely: to what extent is infrastructure, integrated or otherwise, already complicit in anthropogenic climate change?

It is my belief that infrastructure does one of three things:

Transportation - (Primary Role)
Transformation
Transmutation

Paul Graham Raven // Infrastructure fiction and cyborg anthropology