权益分类	功能权益	普通用户	{{item.name}}会员
{{category.name}}	{{benefitItem.name}}

After Katrina: Projecting Racial, Transnational and Environmental Futures Beyond the 'American Century'

卡特里娜飓风之后：预测“美国世纪”之外的种族、跨国和环境未来

基本信息

批准号：
AH/K007432/1
负责人：
Anna Hartnell
金额：
$ 12.18万
依托单位：
Birkbeck, University of London
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Fellowship
财政年份：
2013
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2013 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FK007432%2F1
关键词：
After Katrina Projecting Racial Transnational

项目摘要

Extreme weather events are commonplace in the United States but the legacy of Hurricane Katrina still reverberates throughout contemporary political, cultural and academic debate. The aftermath of Katrina as it unfolded in New Orleans not only raised key questions about race and national identity in 21st century America but it also raised the spectre of climate change in relation to a city built largely below sea level and increasingly exposed to hurricanes as a result of rapidly depleting barrier islands. This project suggests that post-Katrina New Orleans, which has so vividly captured and displayed key aspects of US history, provides us with a vital lens through which to project a future beyond the 'American century'.New Orleans has long posed as a kind of mirror-image of the triumphalist narrative of US identity as it developed in the twentieth century. The twentieth century saw the transformation of New Orleans from a bustling economic centre to a weak, service-based economy dominated by tourism. This has meant that the city has come to be associated with the time of leisure as opposed to that of work, a feature which has exacerbated its image in the popular and literary imagination as a place of decline and obsolescence - one that is in marked tension with the idea of relentless progress central to US national ideology. The advent of Hurricane Katrina, and the drowned black bodies that it brought to world attention, and which bore witness to the catastrophic consequences of US racial and environmental history, was in one sense a literal and horrifying fulfilment of the gothic fantasies that have long hovered over the city. In this way, and by invoking key internal fractures within the US, post-Katrina New Orleans emerges as a key site for analysis of the discourse of US decline that has been gaining ground since 9/11. This project thus asks: if Katrina is a 'teachable moment' (Barack Obama), how might it be drawn upon to better understand what the waning of US power means for the contemporary world? While post-Katrina New Orleans has lent some of the most desperate and dystopian imagery to the discourse of US decline, arguably it has also invoked the possibility of a re-awakening of democracy at the grassroots. The significance of the resurgence of community organizations in post-Katrina New Orleans calling for racial and environmental justice is demonstrated in the vast outpouring of creative and critical projects that reflect these developments. In analysing these emerging forms of social engagement and their interaction with post-Katrina artistic and cultural production, this project suggests that thinking 'after Katrina' might offer an alternative approach to thinking 'post-9/11'. This alternative can help us to re-orient our understanding of the changing status of the United States away from pessimistic renderings of the decline of a superpower towards a vision of a transnational, multi-racial nation in which New Orleans might represent the somewhat paradoxical template for the future. To this end, this project involves a cluster of research-related activities centred on the production of an interdisciplinary monograph which will engage with post-Katrina novels, memoir, films, literary critical discourses, eco-criticism, history, critical race theory and philosophy. It will constitute a distinctive intervention into American studies, promising to question the premise of the discipline: the centrality of the United States in cultural and geo-political terms. This monograph will be supported by and in turn support a series of research collaborations, including international exchanges, and it will also feed directly into various public-facing activities which I believe this kind of research calls for. It will contribute to understandings of the history, politics and culture of the contemporary United States, and will project ways of imagining its transfigured promise into the 21st century.

极端天气事件在美国司空见惯，但卡特里娜飓风的影响仍在当代政治、文化和学术辩论中回荡。卡特里娜飓风在新奥尔良发生的后果不仅引发了关于21世纪美国种族和国家认同的关键问题，而且还引发了气候变化的幽灵，因为这座城市主要建在海平面以下，由于堰洲岛的迅速枯竭，它越来越多地暴露在飓风面前。这个项目表明，卡特里娜飓风后的新奥尔良，如此生动地捕捉和展示了美国历史的关键方面，为我们提供了一个重要的镜头，通过它来预测“美国世纪”之后的未来。长期以来，新奥尔良一直是20世纪发展起来的美国身份必胜主义叙事的镜像。20世纪见证了新奥尔良从一个熙熙攘攘的经济中心向以旅游业为主导的脆弱的服务型经济的转变。这意味着这座城市已经与休闲时间联系在一起，而不是工作时间，这一特征加剧了它在大众和文学想象中的形象，即一个衰落和过时的地方——一个与美国国家意识形态核心的无情进步观念明显紧张的地方。卡特里娜飓风的到来，以及它引起世界关注的被淹死的黑人尸体，见证了美国种族和环境历史的灾难性后果，从某种意义上说，这是长期萦绕在这座城市上空的哥特式幻想的字面和可怕的实现。通过这种方式，并通过援引美国内部的关键裂痕，卡特里娜飓风后的新奥尔良成为分析自9/11以来日益流行的关于美国衰落的论述的关键地点。因此，该项目提出了一个问题：如果卡特里娜飓风是一个“可教育的时刻”（巴拉克•奥巴马），那么如何利用它来更好地理解美国实力的衰落对当代世界意味着什么？虽然卡特里娜飓风过后的新奥尔良为美国衰落的论述提供了一些最绝望、最反乌托邦的形象，但可以说，它也引发了基层民主重新觉醒的可能性。在卡特里娜飓风过后的新奥尔良，呼吁种族和环境正义的社区组织的复兴的重要性体现在大量涌现的反映这些发展的创造性和关键性项目中。通过分析这些新兴的社会参与形式及其与卡特里娜飓风后艺术和文化生产的相互作用，该项目表明，思考“卡特里娜飓风后”可能为思考“后9/11”提供另一种方法。这一选择可以帮助我们重新定位我们对美国不断变化的地位的理解，从一个超级大国衰落的悲观看法转向一个跨国、多种族国家的愿景，在这个愿景中，新奥尔良可能代表着未来的有点矛盾的模板。为此，该项目涉及一系列与研究相关的活动，以跨学科专著的制作为中心，该专著将涉及卡特里娜飓风后的小说、回忆录、电影、文学批评话语、生态批评、历史、批评种族理论和哲学。它将构成对美国研究的独特干预，有望质疑该学科的前提：美国在文化和地缘政治方面的中心地位。这本专著将得到包括国际交流在内的一系列研究合作的支持，并将直接用于我认为这类研究所需要的各种面向公众的活动。它将有助于理解当代美国的历史、政治和文化，并将提出设想其在21世纪的转型前景的方法。