Description
At the 2022 Global Mobility Humanities Conference in Seoul, I presented in the UKRI Session 'Infrastructural Suspensions I' chaired by Professor Peter Adey. I presented on my ongoing PhD research, and discussed 'A more-than-human infrastructural reading of the Korean Demilitarised Zone (DMZ)', with the abstract as follows:The Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) has traditionally been understood as a landscape of division, one which through the assemblage of its material, social, and affective components, both denies human movement across the border and simultaneously disrupts the flow of ideas, information, and exchange between the two nations it separates. In this way, the DMZ can be understood as an infrastructure of immobility and, indeed, being the most hermetically sealed border in the world, is perhaps the archetypal manifestation of such a phenomenon. However, in this presentation I seek to complicate the DMZ as solely a space of immobility, challenging the binary between mobility and immobility by demonstrating that the borderland’s infrastructure(s) of immobility have enabled other and Others mobilities both within and across the space. Highlighting the importance of centering non-human actors in our readings of infrastructures, the presentation focuses upon two animals, the red-crowned crane and the long-tailed goral, which, through their various (im)mobilities, tease out the multiplicity of the DMZ’s infrastructures and demonstrate their natural, cultural, technical, and political entanglements. Furthermore, in examining these species the presentation also reveals the importance of interrogating the voluminous qualities of infrastructures, as well as those components which are invisible or hidden.
My participation in the conference was kindly supported by the UKRI Economic and Social Research Council Grant, 'Connecting Mobilities Research between the UK and South Korea: narrating, mobilizing, experimenting and engaging mobilities for a just future' organised between the Centre for the GeoHumanities at Royal Holloway and the Academy of Mobility Humanities at Konkuk University.
| Period | 28 Oct 2022 |
|---|---|
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Seoul, Korea, Republic ofShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |