Infrastructural breakdowns are often understood as technical failures or accidental disruptions. This talk introduces the concept of organised breakdowns to examine how infrastructural breakdowns disruptions can function as socio-technical mechanisms of power. It illustrates how technological systems, institutional practices, and legal frameworks can be organised to create conditions of access, exclusion, and vulnerability, while reshaping everyday life. In this sense, restrictions and regulatory measures are not simply as external controls imposed upon infrastructure, but mechanisms through which infrastructural systems become implicated in forms of biopolitical governance, while also generating resistance.
Dr Gowhar Farooq studies media and communication technologies and infrastructures to examine how political communication and cultural practices co-constitute one another and shape state-society relations. He completed his PhD in Digital Humanities at King’s College London in 2026 with support from the London Arts and Humanities Partnership. His works have appeared in The International Journal of Press/Politics, Media Watch, Asiascape: Digital Asia and Studies in South Asian Film and Media. Before joining academics, he worked as a journalist with Hindustan Times and Thomson Reuters.
