Beyond ‹the Frontier›? Notes about Infrastructure, Mobility, and Colonialism

Even if antithetically, the colonialist theme of ‹the Frontier› is bound to an imaginary of mobility and transportation, of a system of roads, a network of rails and rivers (Mrázek 2002). Without a doubt, the history of the colonization of Alaska can be described in terms of ‹infrastructure› and ‹mobility›, in terms of the means of transportation and communication (O’Neill 1994; Coen 2012). Taking the ‹Frontier›-image serious does even allow for the description of colonial history in terms of obstacles, of swamps and waterfalls, permafrost and wolf-packs (Coates 1991).
Yet, the crucial question about the politics of the ‹Frontier› remains untouched. In contrast to a historical deconstruction of the political significance of the myth of ‹the Frontier›, though, this paper sets out to outline the epistemo-political presumptions underpinning the articulation of ‹the Frontier› as well as such interrelated terms as ‹infrastructure› and ‹remoteness›. By shedding light on the relationship between those seemingly different terms, the paper provides insight into the political pillars upon which the current theme of the ‹built environment› is being based. The core-question is to what extent do the epistemo-politics of ‹building› (Bauen) condition debates about conservation and development in postcolonial Alaska?
I will argue that, contrarily to Tim Ingold’s reading of Martin Heidegger, ‹building› must not be taken as a seemingly a-political relation between the living organism and its environment (Ingold 2000). Alaska’s colonial history and its imagination as a ‹Final Frontier› (Haycox 2016) illustrate the fundamental flaws underlying Heidegger’s phenomenology of Bauen and ask for a deeper anthropological engagement with both history and infrastructure.