After Disasters: Infrastructures, (Im)mobilities, and the Politics of Recovery

ABSTRACT

This article explores the COVID-19 pandemic to extend the temporal horizon of (post-)disaster mobilities research. We are not only interested in the conspicuous disruption to mobilities wrought by disasters, nor the emergent modes of movement constituted in disasters' immediate aftermaths. Rather, with special reference to Nepal, this article attends to the jagged and protracted process of remobilizing the world in the wake of dramatic events like COVID-19. In short, we are concerned here with the uneven politics of "getting back to normal.” Two dimensions of this are discussed via a critical reflection on the widespread "dimmer switch” metaphor of remobilization (1) the uneven rhythms and refractions of remobilization, and (2) the hegemony of "normal” mobilities systems. Using "light” as an illuminating analytic, we renew calls to examine the disparate impacts of disasters themselves, and also to analyze the uneven politics of "getting back” to "normal” mobilities after disasters.