Performing Infrastructure: The Cultural Biopolitics of the Russian State in Crimea

Abstract

This paper explores the contested status of political sovereignty and the role of infrastructure in establishing political power in Crimea, a Ukrainian territory taken over by Russia in 2014. I analyze the complexities of the construction of the Crimean Bridge, a huge infrastructure project completed by Russia in 2019 to connect Crimea with Russia, along with the bridge’s practical and symbolic value. I suggest that apart from performing a socio-economic function, the bridge has been invested with significant symbolic power, and provides material routes and forms for the construction of a unified national geohistorical consciousness. I argue that the Crimean bridge has become a “focal object” for Russian cultural biopolitics, providing a space for the state-sponsored performances of power that have come to define both the Russian political agenda and efforts to reconnect Crimea historically to Russia. Indeed, the bridge has not only connected the banks of the Kerch Strait between Crimea and the Russian mainland but has also connected different and often competing narratives of Russian history.