** rescheduled event from 9/27/22

This paper is based on my current book project that contemplates the postcolonial trajectories of development and democracy. My focus is a river bridge in Bangladesh which is the country’s largest and most high-profile development project. While the Padma Bridge was inaugurated only in 2022, its status as a populist project and an index of postcolonial corruption dates back more than a decade. In 2011, the World Bank voiced concern over possible corruption and decided to withdraw funding. In 2013 a Canadian court dismissed the case in absence of acceptable evidence. In 2019, multiple people in Bangladesh were killed based on a rumor that the Padma Bridge needed children’s heads for timely completion. In light of these entangled set of events, along with the fetishistic attachments that the bridge has unearthed, my paper aims to situate megaprojects as a specific performance of development. Analytically, I propose that while infrastructural development thrives on and energizes visibiliites, language is often seen as a supplement to the visual. I want to rethink this relationship to argue that aurality, as much as visibility, is constitutive of the connections that Padma Bridge has spectacularly brought to our attention.

Please note: this workshop is using a read-ahead discussion format and attendees are expected to have read the paper beforehand. Email Laura at [email protected] for the paper.