Los abísmos de la gobernanza residual

Los abísmos de la gobernanza residual appears in Infraestructuras Abismales: Comunidades energéticas en la mantención, reparación, mejora o abandono by Gloria Baigorrotegui

This compilation invites reflection, speculation, and exploration of interdisciplinary studies on energy infrastructure and communities from an unusual perspective: their abysmal existence. The initiative was born thanks to the acceptance of the panel "Abysmal Infrastructures. Energy Communities in Maintenance, Repair, Improvement, or Abandonment" at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) and the Latin American Association for Social Studies of Science and Technology (ESOCITE) in November 2022, Cholula, Mexico. Articulated around the question of which (energy) communities emerge from tracing practices of repair, maintenance, and abandonment, these works focus on studies of energy infrastructure. First, from the south of western Patagonia, we study the abandoned mini-hydroelectric plant in the town of Puerto Edén and the maintenance of its common infrastructure, as well as ten indoor monitors installed in the city of Coyhaique, also abandoned at the Nieves del Sur public school. From the Humboldt Current to the upwelling of waters from the south toward the Indian Ocean, other waters bathe the coasts of South Africa. There, we see how the minerals from the tailings of the Tudor Shaft settlement cover the bodies of its inhabitants, especially their children, thanks to what Gabrielle Hecht refers to as the abysses of residual governance. These coasts, in a surface thermosaline circulation, penetrate the Atlantic to reveal how Quebec's sovereignty over the Cree cultures in James Bay is normatively and regulatory constructed through hydroelectricity. Following the Earth's rotation and the Coriolis effect of the winds, it returns to the Pacific Ocean, making contact with the mountain ranges where the minerals, this time lithium and its relatives, constitute the photovoltaic panels of the Blue Lake Rancheria installed in California, United States.

The research presented here was launched into the abyssal depths also with the aim of contributing to transforming our own way of researching, eager to continue touching the abysses and their voids, at the same time. On this point, those who also urgently need repair and regeneration are the conventional research modalities that externalize the rupture and immunize themselves from all harm. This collective work is careful with our differences as researchers from different latitudes in the Americas, workers in fishing and the maintenance of Patagonia, and a former student from Puerto Edén with all her unique experience. Those who read this text will find people open to turning, twisting, and shaking hegemonic orders so that bodies, ruptures, fissures, abandonment, contamination, and deaths take a more predominant place.