Nothing but a Few Signs, Like Stars in an Immense Black Night: Clandestinity and Night-Faring Practices in the Underground Railroad

Jalón Oyarzun, Lucía2024-02-132024-02-132024-02-132023https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/203631The text focuses on how clandestinity, understood as the articulation of spaces of secrecy and invisibility, is traversed by a singular form of architectural knowledge centered around embodied practices. A set of minor know-hows playing with the lines of the visible world while understanding the material effects of individual and collective bodies, all founded on a fine tuned awareness to the fuzziness and material qualities of the world. This phenomenon is studied through the night-faring practices employed by fugitives fleeing slavery American South through the infrastructure known as the Underground Railroad, a network of people, practices and landscapes that connected the United States with Canada and other free territories during the 19th century.night architecturenightaffective imagesemioticssignsnight-faringsurveillancelandscapeunderground railroadclandestinitydarknessNothing but a Few Signs, Like Stars in an Immense Black Night: Clandestinity and Night-Faring Practices in the Underground Railroadtext::book/monograph::book part or chapter