Floating Power: Energy, Infrastructure, and South-South Relations (Experimental Futures)

Floating Power considers the role of energy production on an international scale, challenging the idea that new infrastructures wholly replace older sources of energy. Shifting the discussion from energy transition to energy accumulation, Gökçe Günel engages with a range of electricity producers including hydroelectric, heavy fuel oil, natural gas, and solar power plants, noting their intersections as societies work to expand their supply at large rather than focus on one type of source. Günel uses the Ayşegül Sultan, a Turkish-built floating power plant in Ghana, as a prime example and vehicle to explore how state and corporate intervention impact energy technologies as every nation strives toward infrastructural expansion. Floating Power challenges the linear thinking and substitutive logic of mainstream energy discourse, instead showing how various power sources often expand and grow symbiotically.

Gökçe Günel is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Rice University. She is the author of Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change, and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi, published by Duke University Press, and co-author of Patchwork Ethnography.