Electra, Issue 32

Electra is an international magazine of contemporary thought and culture. It examines the spirit of our current time and reflects on its complexities and symptoms: the ideas, trends and impulses that drive our era. The special feature of Electra issue 32 is ‘Infrastructures’. In a globalised world, this subject has become fundamental for understanding the dynamics that support contemporary societies: from technical progress to the circulation of information and goods, from the logistics that sustain life in major cities to the geopolitical strategies and new technologies that underpin digital platforms. Yet we must not think about infrastructures from a merely technical perspective: we need to examine their increasingly decisive role in systems of political power and economic domination, in regimes of freedom and dependence, in mechanisms of surveillance and control, in apparatuses of administration and oversight. Contributing to this discussion are texts by Yves Citton, Giorgiomaria Cornelio, Anselm Jappe, Brett Neilson, Matteo Pasquinelli and Boris Vormann.