Media Scarcity on the New Silk Road: A Study of the Pak-China Fiber Optic Cable

• In Event: Technology, Violence, and Resistance: Feminist, Decolonial, and Intersectional Perspectives

Abstract

This paper investigates mediatized forms of state control and subaltern resistance related to a network of Chinese infrastructure investment projects in Pakistan, called the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). It is situated in one distinctive ecological, socio-political and historical node of CPEC: an overland fiber optic cable that penetrates through the internationally disputed territories of Gilgit-Baltistan, and connects the Chinese autonomous state of Xinjiang to the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. This paper asks how the Pakistani-military state mediatizes the fiber optic infrastructure as an affective force of nationalism in a disputed territory. More specifically, it explores the rhythms of mediation through which certain state media objects related to the fiber optic cable seek to proliferate, become abundant and occupy, public affective imaginaries of national-regional infrastructure. And, consequently, how such mediation practices institute zones of blackout, disappearance, and surveillance in Gilgit-Baltistan. However, despite such moves to dominance, state infrastructures, such as the fiber optic cable, have foundational fragilities that make them vulnerable to local resistance. Therefore, this paper explores the particular strategies embodied and enacted by locals in Gilgit-Baltistan to make a place and position for themselves. Building on a year of ethnographic and archival research, this paper draws on science and technology studies (Galloway and Thacker 2007, Chun 2006, Parks and Starosielski 2015) infrastructure studies (Anand 2017, von Schnitzler 2017, Larkin 2008), and theories of governmentality (Mbembe 2003, Appadurai 2006, Chatterjee 2008) to support its argument.

Author

• Ayesha Omer, New York University