The Vanishing Power Plant: Infrastructure and Ignorance in Peri-urban Ulaanbaatar

In a neglected corner of peri-urban Ulaanbaatar's sprawling post-socialist slums, the livelihood of dozens of households has over recent years been affected by a large infrastructure project that will never be built. 'Power Plant #5' was originally tendered to a Chinese construction firm in 2008 as part of a national strategy to develop Mongolia's energy production to meet new needs. Taking its departure in the story of a poverty-stricken woman long employed as a caretaker by a mysterious organization allegedly in charge of Power Plant #5, this article explores the peculiar dynamics by which lacking knowledge about this and other infrastructural projects in contemporary Mongolia feeds into dispossessed people's dreams about and plans for the future. Indeed, it suggests that ignorance itself may be conceived of as an infrastructure in its own right, insofar as it constitutes a ground from which certainty as well as uncertainty emerge.