Extractive territories are first and foremost built as a system of roads, bridges, ports and other infrastructures designed to extract raw materials and supply them with inputs (machinery, fuel, workers, etc.). Roads are thus at the heart of the system, both on a global and local scale, where they profoundly modify human and non-human landscapes. This workshop proposes to study these territories and infrastructures from the point of view of their interruptions. Contrary to the dominant image of the inexorable fluidity of exchanges, these interruptions are a reminder of the material and social roughness of these territories. Indeed, it is only in the imagination of planners and cartographers that these roads connect the various points of the territory in a linear and unimpeded manner. In reality, they are interrupted on a daily basis, systematically and not exceptionally, by various natural, animal or social hazards that constitute a daily dialectic inherent to the road in action. The road and its interruption thus appear as two aspects of the same reality (the road is already, originally, that which can be interrupted). These interruptions allow us to see these territories differently: it's in the interruption that otherwise submerged actors, forces and territorialities appear; it's the interruption that suddenly and socially makes visible what the road or duct transports; it's in the interruption that another territoriality appears, made up of ancient paths and local bypasses; it's in the paradoxical time of the interruption that other sociabilities and other daily lives (other languages, other foods, other clothes, etc.) infiltrate the standardized routine of workers, drivers and passengers; finally, the materialities of interruption (tires, branches, stones, chains, fire, etc.) enable a contemporary archaeology of local realities and technical differentials.

We propose to organize the discussion around three main axes: 

The agencies of interruption. The idea is to think of an interruption not only in terms of what it prevents, but rather in terms of what it produces. The interruption as a place for interaction and the construction of new subjectivities or new social actors; the interruption as an expectation, and therefore the life of these downtimes; the interruption as a factory of public policies, novel technical solutions or infrastructural rearrangements; the interruption, finally, from the point of view of the strategies of anticipation, management or repression put in place by the different actors involved.

The materialities of interruption. We encourage the study of the materialities of interruptions by examining the technical realities, their interactions, their differentials, and the symbolism they bring into play. These materialities constitute a rich and unexplored archive, but ephemeral and non-monumental, made up of banal and non-exceptional pieces, whose contemporary archaeology should be possible: what to make of the traces left by ten trucks stuck for a week? What's a tire when it's not used for driving, but for blocking the road?

The territorialities of interruption. The interruption not only cuts one path, but opens many others. So it's worth observing how interruption gives rise to other territorialities, made up of ancient paths, clandestine passages or informal shortcuts that don't appear on maps, but which organize intimate and local landscapes. These other territorialities can be punctual or definitive, public or private, official or clandestine. How do interruptions shape these territories? How do they reveal primitive or earlier geographies that the extractive infrastructure thought had been erased? 

The workshop will take place from 24 to 26 January at the Campus Condorcet. For more information, you can download the programme by clicking on the tab.

Coordinators: Kyra Grieco, Alberto Preci, Diego Ortúzar, Pierre Gautreau, Nicolas Richard.

Organizers: UMR 8168 Mondes Américains, UMR 7227 CREDA, UMR 8586 PRODIG, UMIFRE 17 IFEA.

ANR INTERRUPTIONS. Accidents, dysfonctionnements et temps morts: les territoires extractifs autrement. https://anr.fr/Project-ANR-21-CE03-0017