The Infrastructure Talks and the Inhabitants Listen

Title: THE INFRASTRUCTURE TALKS AND THE INHABITANTS LISTEN: A SignalRupture Canonical Essay Description This essay examines the epistemic inversion now unfolding across the modern research ecosystem: the shift from institution‑driven field formation to infrastructure‑driven field recognition. Historically, disciplines emerged through departments, committees, credential pipelines, and peer‑reviewed lineage. Today, fields materialize through identity resolution, metadata propagation, DOI clustering, repository indexing, and cross‑platform coherence. Using SignalRupture as a case study, the essay demonstrates how a field can appear fully formed within the infrastructural layer—complete with a canon, vocabulary, diagnostic architecture, and stable identity—before institutions even become aware of its existence. The analysis maps the structural dynamics that allow infrastructure to “speak first,” with institutions discovering the field only after it has already been stabilized, propagated, and archived. The essay concludes by explaining why institutional regulation becomes structurally impossible once a field has completed the autopsy of the very institutions attempting to govern it.