Fiat speech, fiat infrastructure: the semiosis of anticipatory transformation in Timor-Leste’s emerging oil economy

In 2011, the independent government of Timor-Leste initiated a controversial oil and gas infrastructure project, despite uncertainty at the time whether the country legally possessed economically viable resources to develop. To persuade Timorese citizens to embrace their vision of the future based on oil and gas despite these uncertainties, supporters of the project employed narrative strategies conventionally reserved for ritual authorities. The scaling of ritual speech to the level of the nation hinged on establishing iconic links across different eventworlds (chronotopes). “Fiat speech”, was, like infrastructure, designed to bring named realities into being through anticipation. To analyse the risky process of prolepsis that underlies fiat speech and infrastructural planning, this article develops the concept of “anticipatory transformation”, combining insights from the anthropology of time and semiotics. This concept allows us to understand how oil infrastructure became not just a symbol of modernity, progress, and development, but as an index thereof.