Limn 10: Chokepoints

edited by Ashley Carse, Jason Cons, and Towns Middleton

Migrants gather in “jungles” at the mouth of the Chunnel, awaiting an opportunity to cross from mainland Europe into the UK undetected. Somali pirates attack ships queuing up at the Bab-El-Mandeb strait, a critical passage between the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. A flash crash in the stock market triggers a digital “circuit breaker” that instantly shuts off digital trade until cooler heads prevail. Transcontinental internet connectivity is funneled through bundles of undersea cables, making global information flow susceptible to disruption by something as minor as a misplaced ship anchor.

New Articles appearing each week!

These tunnels, corridors, and cables illustrate how some conduits can become chokepoints, sites where malfunction, blockage, or strategic pressure constricts—or “chokes”—the flows and connections upon which contemporary life depends. Start your reading with articles by Nicole Starosielski on undersea internet chokepoints, and Cristiana Giordano on migrants in Sicily.

Limn 10 brings together anthropologists, geographers, photographers, media scholars, sociologists, ecologists, and historians to explore chokepoints. We ask: When and why do these sites of constriction and connection emerge? How and for whom do they work? And what do chokepoints reveal about the the past, present, and future?

Featuring articles by:

Claudio Aporta, Stephanie C. Kane, and Aldo Chircop, Carwil Bjork-James, Christian Borch, Jason Cons, Michael Degani, the Dredge Research Collaborative,Jatin Dua, Cristiana Giordano, Orit Halpern, Christopher Jones, Eric Leleu and Vincent Joos,Joshua Lewis, Caroline Melly, Townsend Middleton, Janell Rothenberg, Ivan V. Small, Nicole Starosielski, and Gabriela Valdiva

Photo: E. Leleu