“Engineering Marvel”: Towards Resisting the Affective Politics of Erie Canal Heritage

The Erie Canal is widely regarded as an engineering marvel; it is a symbol of American ingenuity, progress, and power, and it helped establish the U.S. global empire. In light of the 2025 canal bicentennial, however, there is a need for more critically conscious truth–telling regarding the lesser-known and more complicated aspects of Erie Canal heritage. Most notably, this includes broken treaties with the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the illegal theft of lands from Haudenosaunee peoples by New York State as facilitated by the Doctrine of Christian Discovery. However, inaction among settlers complicit in these ongoing struggles cannot be addressed solely through intellectual means; it requires critical affective engagements with dominant Erie Canal heritage discourses. I analyze the affective politics of Erie Canal heritage in the current planning efforts of the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor and New York State Reimagine the Canals tourism and recreation marketing initiatives. I illustrate how the dominant narrative of the Erie Canal in heritage planning neuropolitically engineers feelings of marvel for the canal and perpetuates the discourse of discovery—the language of conquest, ownership, and profit foundational to the Doctrine of Christian Discovery. Consequently, many settlers remain unable to recognize the Erie Canal’s ongoing violence; resisting the affective politics of dominant Erie Canal heritage marketing in support of Haudenosaunee sovereignty, therefore, requires cultivating deeper embodied awareness to more holistically address complexities of (in)justice in everyday contestations over lands and bodies.