Speculative Statecraft: A Close Reading of Bodies in Transit

Keywords: archive, historical geography, biopolitics, speculation, urban geography
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Monday
Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 26

Abstract

This paper centers on a close historical and textual reading of the Bodies in Transit ledgers, an arcane set of records collected by the New York City Metropolitan Board of Health between 1859 and 1894. I propose the theoretical framework of speculation, which I define as the epistemic modality of biopolitics, to reconsider the long history of urban spatial governmentality. What does the historicity of Bodies in Transit reveal about the complex and contingent practices of statecraft, biopolitics, and space through the framework of speculation? Prompted not only by increased anxiety over contagion and pressures to manage the living by segregating the dead, these records are also fundamentally linked to the accelerated promiscuity of real estate capital and land speculation in New York City. As I suggest, a series of regulatory and legislative actions in the early nineteenth century that restricted the placement of cemeteries and burial grounds in densely-populated areas of Manhattan in the interest of public health reshaped private land use practices to promote rent-seeking behavior.