Out of the rubble: Affective infrapolitics in Bangkok

Abstract

The present study analyzes the everyday rhythms of a ruin in Bangkok, where middle-class residents are in day-to-day contact with the disenfranchised—mostly migrants from Northeast Thailand. I study the connections between ruined space, non-hegemonic mobility, the body, and everyday resistance. I do so by comparing and contrasting the bodily comportment of the disenfranchised (embodied everyday resistance) with the middle-class gaze over the ruin. The middle-class gaze is informed by Thai/global notions about what it means to be “civilized”, and it contains a primordial fear of “savagery”. The fear of the ruin is a fear of ruination, in the sense of losing material wealth and sliding into the lower class.