ANT461H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1,3: Language Game, Diepsloot
Document Summary
2004 protest in diepsloot: police response reminiscent of the 1980s. Water cannons, rubber bullets and stun grenades. Interrupted the national celebration of a decade of democracy. Posed a challenge to the project of post-apartheid transition. Challenge to the existing political language game. Infrastructure in the colonies was linked to extraction and. Biopolitics closely bound up with the project of colonial domination. Colonial infrastructure as a way to extract resources: symbols and conduits of apartheid state power. Apartheid symbolized in infrastructure: race separation on buses, entrances, etc, racial economy. Infrastructure not just to enable circulation, but also to impede, prescribe and prompt movement. Focus on administrative powers of the local state: native affairs came to provide housing, transport and utilities to the african working class, disorganizing the african opposition. Central to the upkeep of racial categories. State became the provider to the african working class. Infrastructure used to immobilize the counter public: mass construction of townships without important city features.
