The Matter of Black Lives: Hauntology, Infrastructure, and the Necropolitics of History in the American South

Abstract This article suggests that recent disputes over the preservation of public monuments typically commemorating “great men” of history (alongside similar artifacts of the built environment) are just one aspect of spatial politics requiring greater scholarly analysis. Contests over the material commemoration of historical figures in civic spaces must also be assessed in relation to the everyday decisions public and private actors make during the design, construction, and maintenance of public infrastructure about preserving (or eradicating) Others’ histories, material culture, and especially, their biological remains. Such decisions contribute to the hauntology of infrastructure. Application of Achille Mbembe's theories of necropolitics and necropower to development practices in everyday American public spaces is critical to the ensuing discussion of infrastructural hauntology. Eminent domain powers are inextricably connected to necropolitics, and ultimately, to infrastructure's hauntology. The status of the dead is contrasted with that of their physical representations in statues, monuments, and other commemorative facsimiles in greater Charlottesville, Virginia. The analysis shows how conceptions of race and (infra)structural racial formations can both inadvertently and deliberately produce the desecration of minoritized mortuary properties.