Polish (Im)mobility: The Visuality of Industrial Semi-peripheries

The increasing presence of visuals in popular media leads us to reflect on the role they play in the current system. The example of the Central Transport Port, analysed by the authors' subjects, becomes one of the many points that organise the Polish discourse, making desire invested in a certain way. Author persons, through the lens of Lacanian psychoanalysis, treat the visualisations of CPK as a symptom of a certain phantasm. Analysing the observable overproduction of visualisations in the media in recent years, they point out that their position in contemporary reality is significantly different from the one they occupied in 20th century societies. They also note that the process of the megaproject is part of the current trends in the development of capitalism. According to the contributors, the visualisation of megaprojects acts as one of the instruments of power that directs desire towards its own preferred trajectories. The visualised infrastructure of CPK, by reducing the diversity of the world to its functionality, creates a futuristic vision of reality in which technology is a decoration for an already technological design. This vision is a screen for phantasmagorical projections leading to the transformation of the symbolic dimension in such a way as to exclude (Verwerfen) workers from its sphere. The dehumanised space of information and resource flows in fact narrows the possibilities of movement, making its exterior appear fussy. The dominant role that megaprojects play in the modern age is linked to the way in which the successive stages of a given project do not delineate separate, unconnected segments. They maintain continuity with one another, being constantly sustained by engagement. Each element of a contemporary megaproject aims to accumulate human involvement for as long as possible. The authors' persons agree with the thesis that contemporary politics is no longer organised in a disciplinary, individual-centred way, but in a controlling way in which engagement in the system as a whole of life.