People as rubble: Carcerality and survival in the city

Abstract

How might we think of the relation between carcerality and survival in urban environments? What are the limits that people are confronted with - be it because of their ethnicity, caste or socioeconomic status - and how does this have bearings on the material politics of city-making? Drawing on a story of wetlands in the city of Guwahati in northeastern India, this paper draws attention to the ways in which people and other-than-human denizens inhabit the urban fringes. It draws attention to variegated processes of filling up wetlands, state action in the name of eco-restoration, and the ways in which this has bearings on both human and other-than-human life. Evictions are rife. People are reduced to living amidst rubble. At the same time, speculative urbanization also affects the city’s nonhuman denizens. The paper concludes by discussing broader questions of habitability in the city in the wake of carcerality.