Infrapolitics or the Infrastructuring of Political Events

Abstract

Taking as starting point science and technology studies (sts)’ discussion about politics, this paper introduces the concept of infrapolitics to think, not only the role of things as political actors, but also the political role of the settings where the political action takes place. Following Agamben’s work around the bare life, the author states the indistinction between technology and politics at the origin of the qualification of life, taking as example the Aristotelian zoon politikón. From an aesthetic approach, it is analyzed an outstanding event of the last century, the arrest of Rosa Parks, to account for the participation of things in the infrastructuring of political events. The infrapolitics concept allows to ask ourselves about those things that actively work in silence to support certain forms of life. In this sense, it is an ecological concept that gives political character to things and the settings where political action takes place.