ABSTRACT
Our temporal apprehension of the Anthropocene is marked by a disabling combination of a sense of urgency and inaction. This chapter brings this paradox into focus through a focus on infrastructure. Infrastructure names the utilities—roads, electric grids, sewage systems—that allow human life to thrive and that only call for attention when they fail; they only become visible in emergencies. Drawing on a number of literary examples—Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place, Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange, and Ben Lerner’s 10:04—the chapter show how the temporality of infrastructure is more complicated than the dyad of invisibility and emergency suggests. By foregrounding the crucial importance of energy infrastructures, the chapter draws on insights from the interdisciplinary field of the energy humanities to show that infrastructure can even become a catalyst of hope and provide a sense of continuity and a shared experience that can help confront climate emergency without resorting to apocalyptical thinking.
