Paths of authority, roads of resistance: Ambiguous rural infrastructure and slippery stabilization in eastern DR Congo

Abstract This article uses the concept of the ‘infrastructural frontier’ to trace the linkages between externally financed road building projects and the constitution of eastern DR Congo as a liminal political space at the material edge of the state. This frontier space has two core features: first, the patchy quality of its road infrastructure, which is perpetually rebuilt only to disintegrate again. Second, the transient nature of configurations of authority and control, leading to ‘circulation struggles’ along roads that are never fully functional. These features contribute to the collapse of a clear-cut dichotomy between the presence and the absence of transport infrastructure, but also between spaces of control and spaces of resistance. The constitution of eastern Congo as an infrastructural frontier, we argue, is importantly related to its ‘subversive soils’, whose clayish, sticky substance accelerates road degradation and compounds power projection. The resulting patchiness of both durable road infrastructure and central state control generates a ‘frontier effect’: it invites perpetual external donor interventions to build roads, but these projects never fundamentally upend the infrastructural and political state of affairs. In fact, as we demonstrate, these projects have become crucial to its very constitution. These observations point to the dual temporality of eastern Congo’s ‘perpetual’ infrastructural frontier, where the short-term volatility of circulation struggles is both a product of and reproduces its frontier-ness over the longue duree. Our contribution thus demonstrates the intricate relations between the temporal, material and political qualities of frontier spaces.