Servers, Dishes, IXPs: Contesting Sovereign Materialities and Infrastructures
Lauren Bridges’ paper invites us to imagine the possibilities offered feminist servers to envision digital infrastructures build around alternative, feminist, relational politics that serve feminist, intersectional, antiracist, and decolonial agendas.
Marwan M. Kraidy’s paper offers the notion of ‘digital exclosure’ as a way to conceptualize the specific politics of sovereignty and symbolic of fire at play in Islamic State’s obsession with the destruction of satellite dishes. For Kraidy, this highlights how rather than understanding IS as a ‘reactionary throwback to the Middle Ages, Islamic State reflects a present in which harsh notions of sovereignty increasingly prevail.”
Fernanda R. Rosa explores the first Internet Exchange Point (IXP) in Brazil, located in São Paulo, to discuss the limits of local internet governance focused on regional development and the “public good” narrative. As she shows, when infrastructure is taken into consideration, discussions that associate technology and national borders, digital dynamics and sovereignty become more intricate.