Data Center Resistance as Counter-Apocalyptic Praxis

This paper analyzes environmental justice campaigns in Data Center Alley in Northern Virginia as sites of counter-apocalyptic imagination. Over 300 data centers host an estimated 70% of the world’s internet traffic in the suburbs of Washington, DC near Ashburn, Virginia. Interfaith organizations and faith communities have resisted the further development of such centers by simultaneously critiquing the future imaginations manifest in the material, technological, and economic processes of techno-utopians and proposing alternative futures rooted in visions of wisdom. I argue that these sites of local resistance are crucibles for counter-apocalyptic praxis. By engaging in the practice of communal imagination, these communities make space for difficult conversations that enable hard and courageous choices to enable a shared, intergenerational future.