On Some Rationales for “Dark Infrastructure”:

Mobilization for Invisibility at a Landfill in Indonesia and its Effect

Abstract

  This paper probes the invisibility of a landfill in Indonesia, which is taken for granted by locals, even though experts point out its potential problems, such as water pollution and murky privatization. We may call the nature of this landfill “dark infrastructure,” following recent anthropological works on technological infrastructure and dark anthropology. The concept illuminates the way infrastructures retain their taken-for-grantedness, an aspect which has not been explored to a great extent in previous studies. This study conducted an ethnographic survey of the landfill, which showed that the de-problematization derives from the mobilization of heterogeneous elements such as the physical form of the landfill, contract documents, compromises between villagers and the city government, and especially the dual uncertainty of the gasification in progress and the conception of “korupsi (corruption)” that enacts the temporality of the future. In conclusion, this temporality is analyzed as the politics of “indecision”.