- Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
Ute Tellmann
University of Hamburg, Department of Social Sciences, Faculty Member
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
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This article analyzes how infrastructures take part in constituting Europe as a material collectivity. To that end, it modifies Bruno Latour’s sociology of associations in two respects: In order to theorize the relation between... more
This article analyzes how infrastructures take part in constituting Europe as a material collectivity. To that end, it modifies Bruno Latour’s sociology of associations in two respects: In order to theorize the relation between connectivity and collectivity, we consider the political rationalities that infrastructures embody and the political spatiality that they configure. This theoretical perspective is put to a test in exploring the “infrastructuralism” that lies at the core of the European project. After tracing both the operative and imaginary significance of infrastructure policy historically, the analysis concentrates on the most recent initiative to build trans-European energy networks. We demonstrate that the neoliberal configuration of infrastructural collectivity manifests itself in a specific spatial configuration of the market. Europe’s infrastructuralism defines the common as a topological space of corridors and high-voltage lines, which align territorial cohesion with fragmentation.
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This article develops a notion of global territoriality for understanding the proliferation of special offshore zones in the context of globalization. It furnishes an account of how political territoriality is used for shaping global... more
This article develops a notion of global territoriality for understanding the proliferation of special offshore zones in the context of globalization. It furnishes an account of how political territoriality is used for shaping global dis/connectivity. The argument is developed through the exploration of two distinct cases of offshore-zones that are usually not theorized as a common phenomenon: One case is the financial offshore centre on Cayman Islands, the other case is the Australian offshore centre for processing refugee claims on Christmas Island. Whereas the one site deals with non-resident money, the other one administers non-resident subjects. The article shows that despite the different aims that these sites serve, they are homologous in how they employ territorial strategies for modulating connectivity. We focus on three dimensions: the topological enfolding of inside/outside relations, the bifurcation between legal and physical presence and a politics of visibility. By studying how these uses of territoriality entail a recalibration of the obligations, visibility, spatiality and accountability tied to monetary and legal relations, this article develops a different notion of the global. Instead of understanding the global in terms of scale, it suggests to understand the global in terms of a politics of connectivity.
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Einleitung zum Themenheft "Bruno Latours neue politische Soziologie" der Zeitschrift Soziale Welt (H. 3/2016)
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This article examines how the notion of uncertainty is used as a tool of critique in the context of financial crises. It counters the prevalent tendency to understand uncertainty solely in terms of an epistemological limit to knowledge.... more
This article examines how the notion of uncertainty is used as a tool of critique in the context of financial crises. It counters the prevalent tendency to understand uncertainty solely in terms of an epistemological limit to knowledge. Uncertainty should rather be seen in the context of different historical ontologies of money and economic subjectivity. The article uses a historical analysis to make its point. It investigates two discourses on uncertainty in the context of financial crisis that are usually not properly distinguished: the role of uncertainty for debating the financial crisis in the 1930s and since 2008. While in the first case the financial future was defined in terms of a potential that needs to be seized and materialized by a subject that is able to posit its will through time, the current appeal to uncertainty depicts the future as a catastrophe that needs to be survived and feared by the subject. Each notion of uncertainty gives rise to very different regulatory responses. The article discusses these historical findings in regard to the critical hopes pinned on the notion of uncertainty.