IJURR Lecture: Erin McElroy

Chaired by: Nik Theodore and Liza Weinstein

 

Date: Thursday 19 March, 16.10–17.30 pm
Location: Union Square room 15/16.

 

 

Today we are witness to an emergent conjuncture in speculative urbanism in which dozens of spaces are being carved out by Silicon Valley investors with visions of creating exclusive enclaves for their peers. Not only do these urban fantasies proliferate technofeudal and increasingly technofascistic aspirations, but many also mobilize racial capitalist narratives rendered about “doomed” San Francisco, where their investors bear roots. These dehumanizing stories cast the city once emblematic of Silicon Valley imperial futurity as taken over by unhoused residents and anticapitalist organizers who threaten to block new luxury development and abolish carceral technosolutionism. While some Silicon Valley entrepreneurs champion “fixing” the broken city, others have opted to escape it altogether and secure new utopian territories elsewhere, often along familiar lines of white flight. In this talk, I question what it means that such technofeudal fantasies hinge upon San Francisco’s alleged failures. At the same time, I explore how many who attempt to secede from the state and find solace in sandboxes of libertarian experimentation fail to produce their utopian colonies, often due to localized pushback. Upon failure, tech entrepreneurs then return to the state, endeavoring its co-optation through a Muskian iteration of the imperial boomerang. In this sense, I find failure an important multi-scalar analytic in assessing the present. Not only do San Francisco’s alleged failures impelescape, but also escapism itself ends up failing. As I question, how can the ongoing work of spatial justice and abolitionist organizing drive technofascistic impulses themselves to fail?