• Screenshot 2025-10-20 at 11.32.18

We are Tectonic! A Queer Geophysics for Intra-Solidarities and Resisting the Cloud Regime

A Research Paper by Miriyam Aouragh, Helen Pritchard, Jara Rocha, Seda Gürses and Femke Snelting, published by Lagoonscapes

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses how Big Tech and global consultancy firms are asserting control over carbon removal certification and governance through infrastructure solutions and technical standards. We argue that defining gaps in the underground constitutes a global takeover of material sovereignty, encompassing both knowledge and geological formations. We unearth Big Tech’s strategies of infra-solutionism to demonstrate, drawing on the work of inhuman geographer Kathryn Yusoff, how this takeover reinforces geological grammars and essentialises racialised and sexualised categories that disconnect us from the Earth. Drawing on queer poetry together with work of Marxist agronomist Amílcal Cabral we advocate for resistance to dominant geopower and form transnational solidarities against the cloud regime.

 

IMAGE: The Underground Division, Crystal Mutual Aid: Deplacement. 2025. Cascading animation, screenshot. https://ddivision.xyz/rockrepo/crystals, cc4r [Source]

Miriyam Aouragh

About

Dr. Miriyam Aouragh is a Reader at CAMRI. She has studied the implications of the internet as it was first introduced (“Web 1.0”) in Palestine (PhD, University of Amsterdam, 2000-2008) to understand in particular the significance of techno-­social evolutions by analysing how a new technology coincided with the outbreak of a mass uprising (Second Intifada 2000-2005). She then focused on the political role of new internet developments, such as blogging and social networking (“Web 2.0”) for grassroots activism in Lebanon and Palestine (Postdoc, Oxford Internet Institute, 2009-2011). After earning a Leverhulme Early Career (UoW, 2013-2016) funding Miriyam set-up a critical research project in which she relates theory with online analysis through a focus on the complex revolutionary dynamics in the Arab world. In these new techno-social relations, marked by revolution and counter-revolution, she researched and wrote about the paradoxical context of online-revolution and cyber-imperialism. During fieldwork in Palestine, Jordan Lebanon and Morocco, she combined participant observation and interviews with media analyses and throughout her academic projects and collaborations in general, she relates online studies and observations with ethnographic (offline) methodologies, and theoretical focus on critical race, political-economy and infrastructures. Miriyam theorizes how the contradictions of capitalism shape the modes and meanings of resistance in the era of revolution and digital transformations. Her work is published in several books and journals (see Publications) including her own monograph Palestine Online (IB Tauris 2011), forthcoming book on Cyber Imperialism (2021) and monograph about the (r)evolutionary dynamics of protest in Morocco (2022). Miriyam teaching about internet, (global) media, (Middle East/race) politics and anthropology. She welcomes and supervises PhD students.

Details

Date
15 August 2025
Research Area
Published By
Lagoonscapes
Share this article
FacebooktwitterredditlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail
CAMRI | We are Tectonic! A Queer Geophysics for Intra-Solidarities and Resisting the Cloud Regime - CAMRI
class="pirenko_portfolios-template-default single single-pirenko_portfolios postid-10703 samba_theme samba_left_nav samba_left_align samba_responsive thvers_85 wpb-js-composer js-comp-ver-6.5.0 vc_responsive"