Beyond state space: Competing spatializations and the violence of energy infrastructures

Abstract

Energy infrastructures are the talk of the hour. Enormous investments are mobilized globally to overhaul national energy systems, link different grids, and make electricity provision ‘future proof’. Analyses, however, have frequently limited themselves to binary perspectives between national energy spaces and private or foreign provision, energy independence and dependence. Contributing to literature on energy spatialities, infrastructure violence, and contestation, we propose a differentiated, relational perspective on energy spaces and their scalar iterations. Based on an analysis of three instances of infrastructural connections feeding into and out of the Mexican grid, we argue that the dominant production of spaces, rather than a rupture with previous forms of territorialization, builds on prior (state and non-state) violence, and must be understood within the reorganization of geographies of capitalism. These infrastructural projects constitute only one of several competing and contradicting forms of spatialization in efforts to transform energy systems. We suggest exploring the relation between energy infrastructure’s role in producing spaces of violence against people and nature, and alternative, contestatory politics.