Intervention
The Writing of Catastrophe:
From Natural Disaster to Social Psychosis
(a text in progress by R. Groome)
Why is it so difficult to speak and write of Catastrophe ?
Every epoch asks this perenial question: Why have we lost our artists,
philosophers, journalists, scientists, and statesmen who would be able
to write one verse, play, or analysis of Catastrophe that would enlighten
the public ? Where are our modern day tragedians ?
Our brief article would like to sketch a response to this difficult
question not simply by talking about Catastrophe, but by opening a dialogue
with Catastrophe, that is to say, by making room for a discussion on the
difficulties of speaking and writing of Catastrophe. For in every natural
and cultural catastrophe there is an Other Catastrophe that goes unheard
of or is misread by the common journalistic and humanitarian response to
disaster.
The national medias seem to recognize this Other Catastrophe, yet do
not quite know how to read it, except to propose that it offers us an educational
opportunity in the lessons of history. Or in the words of Newsweek:
"The possible lessons go beyond natural disasters, as important
as natural disasters and their victims may be". (Rita's Lessons/Newsweek
Oct.3,05). It will be our purpose in this article to reveal how such
lessons are systematically unlearned and lead to nothing other than the
missed lessons of tragedy.
The Other Catastrophe: Symptoms of Katrina and Rita
Although it was recognized rather early on that it was not hurricane
Katrina itself as natural disaster, but the lack of response received
in her after-math that caused a major part of the destruction, it soon
became recognizable that even this lack of response was not the real problem.
For a more true Catastrophe was beginning to write itself behind the visible
Katrina: one that was not simply a force of nature represented on a radar
or television screen, but a force of civilization or noise disrupting
such representations. Indeed, one may well ask if on attempting to report
on this Other Catastrophe not only our medias, but government officials
systematically failed to represent the reality on the ground, so that
"no matter how much governments plan someone always fails to get
the message" (Newsweek).
What could be worse ? The message was often reversed: people being
told by officials to evacuate their cities, then to return, then not to
return (Katrina), then told to evacuate, then not to evacuate (Rita). Yet,
the reversals did not stop there, but expressed themselves in forms of irony
that is hard not to call tragic: How does an oil rich state such as
Texas not have fuel stockpiles so that motorist would not run out of gas
in emergency situations? How does a modern city such as New Orleans
surronded by a body of water equal to that surronding cities such as those
found in the Netherlands, not have 'learned the lesson of history' and built
a system of dikes that would provide for its citizens ?
The Fantasy Dimension of Reality
Such missed acts and reversals have become the norm, not the exception,
in our age of instanteous communications So much so, that in the imperatives
to make sense and do something, a catastrophe goes from being a contingent
event to a necessary act once its reality acquires a certain dimension
of fantasy. For instance, no matter which cultural group one listened to
in the reporting on hurricane Katrina - whether religous, political, artistic,
scientific, etc. - it had become increasingly clear that the real
catastrophe lay in a certain sense dormant and only finally emerged as a
Catastrophe in a catastrophe when millions of disenfranchised people were
discovered living in third world conditions in a modern land of plenty. To
make sense of this absurdity, each group attempted to explain the reality
on the ground with the construction of a fantasy: for the political activist,
the real catastrophe of Katrina was a racially motivated act, since someone
either did not build the levees around New Orleans sufficiently strong to
withstand the hurricane or someone deliberately sabotaged the levees around
the black neighborhoods to protect the French Quarter; for the religous
zealot, the real catastrophe was the result of an act of God metting out
punishment to a sinful city; for the local people the real catastrophe occured
with the 'bad-faith' of those officials who not merely failed to take seriously
their calls for assistance after the hurricane, but failed to plan for their
evacuation in the first place; while for the scientist, the real catastrophe
had already occurred the moment the industrialized countries failed to take
responsibility for global warming and the disasterous effect it will have
on the world's poor.
What is important in each one of these examples is that in order to
explain an event, and no longer simply report it, such and such an act is
systematically believed in. At this level, it becomes evident that
the importance of the event is not merely if it occurred or not; rather
that when it did happen, there were groups of people and individuals who
would always think it did not happen "that way", or that if it did not actually
happen, others would always think it did in some "particuliar way". Otherwise
said, it is the mode or manner in which the event becomes recognizable
that is crucial. For it is this noise of interpretation - and the need
to exclude or frame it - that is itself part of the catastrophe. For each
one of these modes of explaining a catastrophe goes from being a description
of a contingent event to the witnessing of a necessary act the moment it is
framed in a belief system. Such fantasy frames serving not only to
give the interpreter the power to see behind the screen of appearances to
the Other Catastrophe, but to be blind to other equally possible interpretations
of reality. In the urgency "to do something" and "to understand", a catastrophe
is not a mere natural disaster, but has become an opportunity for anyone
from a moralist to a city manager to voice their ideas and to exclude a certain
noise as coming under the control of an Ideal: God, the State, the Father.
For this Ideal is believed to be representative not merely of Nature, but
of some Other: that is to say, of a cultural figure, Big Brother, or "voice
of conscious" that one supposes is - or should be - behind the scenes
watching, caring for, or even punishing its subjects.
From Screen of Culture to Other of Civilization
In beginning to write and read a catastrophe, it is easy to observe
that the moment we attempt to represent or speak about it, we are no longer
reporting a natural event, but constructing a reality that is always on
the verge of reversing, being eclipsed, then fantasized to the limit where
the event would find its reason in a cultural ideal (whether religious,
artistic, political, or scientific). To recognize how this catastrophe becomes
Other - or comes from the Other - is to state that this reality consists
in a dimension of fantasy. What may come as a surprise, at least for
some, is just how the use of fantasy sets the conditions for a cultural
transmission not merely of natural disaster, but a certain catastrophe of
civilization. Such a catastrophe is traumatic in two times: firstly, in
the experience not merely - or primarily - of a shock from an exterior event
- as an enemy or natural disaster - but as an impossible interior
of modern civilization itself; secondly, as a void that only becomes reality
once projected onto the screen of fantasy. In this respect, a fantasy
is nothing other than the attempt to make this 'blind-spot' of our modern
day civilizations representable through cultural frameworks, i.e. through
religion, politics, science, and art.
Finally, today, in our secular and modern democracies if it is through
a process of Critique that cultural fantasies are 'de-ontologized', that
is to say, criticized as forms of regression serving to thwart the progress
of civilization, then these traditional forms of critique (government
watchdog agencies, journalism, activism, etc.) have become, at best, mere
braking mechanisms, at worst, part of the problem itself. For by handing
over to the journalists ( or the experts and university professors) the
writing of catastrophe, such an analysis remains at the level of a cultural
critique: that is to say, such forms of analysis are caught within
the fantasy dimension of the event the moment they try "to get behind the
scenes" in order to reveal so many agents of deception, bad faith, incompetence,
and ideology. No doubt, investigative reporting, from Watergate to
the recent uncovering of the C.I.A. leaks by the office of vice president
Cheney, has served to reveal certain acts that actually happened or were
perpetuated within an unethical intent, yet when all is said and done a question
needs to be asked:
Is there not the recognition today of a more primary act that does
not leave a trace, one that is not partisian to such and such a party
or cultural group, but is an effect of the structure in which such human
actors are caught ?
Or again, is there a certain inhuman inertia in each and every one
of these events that reveals the anxiety of an act where no one is in control
? What would it be to take responsibility for such a place, or rather,
what would it mean to assume responsibility for an Other Catastrophe beyond
a fantasy and its critique ?
To begin to respond to these questions is to reopen a question on the
tragedy of civilization.
Modern Catastrophe and its Pathological Defense
This much said, if a catastrophe can be shown to come not merely from
an other exterior to society, whether as cultural enemy or natural disaster,
but from an Other within a civilization itself, then is it this force
of civilization that should be used to explain culture (and not the other
way around) beyond the screen of fantasy and critique. For in such cases,
to defend oneself against a catastrophe would not merely - or primarily
- be a defense against a contingent event - through an actual flight
from a natural disaster, but a defense against the forces of civilization
itself: a peculiarly modern defense consisting in an impossible flight (remember
those motorist stuck in traffic with Rita) and certain pathological reactions
(remember those senseless and paranoiac acts of certain people and police
of New Orleans). Fantasy, in the this instance, is a way to 'act out'
an impossible flight from this Other Catastrophe of our modern civilizations;
while, it sets up a 'passage to the act' that systematically goes from being
a mere humanitarian response to paranoiac delirium (remember the national
guard being sent in to New Orleans 'to protect' the citizens). For
if an act of defense systematically becomes as catastrophic as the
event one is supposedly fleeing from, then has this mode of defense become
itself part of the real tragedy ? Today, in this loss of flight from
this Other Catastrophe, are we not witnessing the unleashing of something
real that resists the traditional forms of defense whether in the actual
flight from natural disaster or their projection in terms of cultural fantasy
and critique ? Is it not this passage beyond the ideals of democracy
- beyond the good and the economy of goods - that tragedy has always served
to reveal in a writing of pathos (pathology) ?
In asking these questions we are beginning to ask the question if a
real Catastrophe were ever to appear on a cultural emission, a television,
for example, would it necessarily crack the screen ? What would be
a writing of catastrophe that would make a direct reading of this crack possible,
that is to say, that would not re-present Catastrophe, but present
it ? As odd as these questions may sound, they will have served
our purpose here if they call attention to the distance a cultural fantasy
assumes in shielding us from what is real in a catastrophe: its pathology
(just as more than one photographer stands accused of using a zoom lens
- or ghetto scope - to stay at a distance from the tragedy he or she is
attempting to portray, more than one professor, politician, psychotherapist,
or religous cleric stands accused of merely speculating on the reality of
their subjects). Such questions will have also served their purpose if they
begin to indicate why the dominant voices of our cultural institutions -
the politicians, religous clerics, journalists, and artists - seem themselves
to be a defensive mode of re-presenting what is real in this Other Catastrophe.
To construct this Other Catastrophe in its tragic dimensions, reveals
a writing of pathology that, although unreadable in a critique of culture,
opens up a clinic of civilization.
Robert Groome
Santa Monica, CA
2005
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