Event

IOWC Speaker Series: Ayesha Vemuri

Wednesday, October 29, 2025 15:00to17:00
Peterson Hall Room 116, 3460 rue McTavish, Montreal, QC, H3A 0E6, CA

Ayesha Vemuri (Ph.D candidate in the Department of Art History and Communications Studies, ) 

"The Case for Letting Assam Flood: Speculative Infrastructure in the Brahmaputra Floodplain"

The transnational Brahmaputra River is a site where ecological uncertainty, geopolitical anxiety, and state securitization converge. Flowing through Tibet, India, and Bangladesh, the river is central to both transnational tensions and domestic struggles over citizenship and land. This presentation traces how state discourse on China’s supposed “weaponization” of water and the threat of Bangladeshi “climate refugees” are linked through the logic of speculation. I argue that border, military, and surveillance infrastructures can be understood as forms of what I theorize as “speculative infrastructure”—projects that materialize imagined future threats, transforming uncertainty into a rationale for intervention in the present. In doing so, the talk contributes to debates on environmental media, infrastructure, and the speculative temporalities of state power in South Asia.

Light refreshments served.

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