Abstract for a new paper . . . The city consists of a collision of relativistic spaces and temporalities that overlap in tension with each other, nowhere more evident than in Seoul’s subway system, where, above ground, urban development space is warped around new stations and new lines, while below, space becomes the 2-3 minutes duration between stops. For many theorists, this sprawling subway (the largest in the world) is an “empty” time in what Auge calls a “non-place”--a period of empty waiting. In addition, capital has been quick to exploit these temporal and spatial interstices, with Seoul’s subway stations host to a cacophony of advertising and media. On the other hand, the subway also contributes to new forms of connection and place-making, possibilities that have been enabled by technological developments of mobile connectivity that extrapolate on digital presence and absence in order to forge new quantum potentialities for human life and sociality. I...
Occasional posts on anthropologically interesting science fiction, anthropological futures and my own future as an anthropologist.