After Katrina: Projecting Racial, Transnational and Environmental Futures Beyond the 'American 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然影响着当代政治、文化和学术辩论。卡特里娜飓风在新奥尔良的余波不仅引发了有关21世纪美国种族和国家认同的关键问题，还引发了人们对气候变化的担忧，因为这座城市建在海平面以下，由于障碍岛的迅速枯竭，越来越多地暴露在飓风中。这个项目表明，卡特里娜飓风过后的新奥尔良，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视角，通过它来投射一个超越美国世纪的未来。新奥尔良长期以来一直被认为是20世纪美国身份凯旋主义叙事的一种镜像。20世纪见证了新奥尔良从一个繁华的经济中心转变为一个以旅游业为主的弱的、以服务为基础的经济。这意味着，这座城市开始与休闲时间联系在一起，而不是与工作时间联系在一起，这一特征加剧了它在流行和文学想象中作为衰落和过时之地的形象--这与美国国家意识形态核心的不懈进步的理念明显紧张。卡特里娜飓风的到来，以及它引起世界关注的被淹死的黑色身体，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，它是长期徘徊在这座城市上空的哥特式幻想的字面上和可怕的实现。通过这种方式，并通过引发美国内部的关键内部裂痕，卡特里娜飓风后的新奥尔良成为分析美国衰落话语的关键场所，自9/11以来，美国衰落的话语一直在获得支持。因此，这个项目提出了一个问题：如果卡特里娜飓风是一个“可教的时刻”(巴拉克·奥巴马)，如何利用它来更好地理解美国实力的减弱对当代世界意味着什么？尽管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和反乌托邦的形象，但可以说，它也唤起了基层民主重新觉醒的可能性。在卡特里娜飓风后的新奥尔良，呼吁种族和环境正义的社区组织复兴的重要性体现在反映这些事态发展的创造性和批判性项目的大量涌现。在分析这些新出现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互动时，该项目建议，“卡特里娜飓风后”思考可能为“9/11”后思考提供一种替代方法。这种选择可以帮助我们重新定位对美国不断变化的地位的理解，摆脱对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，在这个国家中，新奥尔良可能代表着有点自相矛盾的未来模板。为此，该项目涉及一系列与研究有关的活动，重点是编写一本跨学科专著，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，承诺质疑该学科的前提：美国在文化和地缘政治方面的中心地位。这本专著将得到一系列研究合作的支持，并反过来支持包括国际交流在内的一系列研究合作，它还将直接进入各种面向公众的活动，我相信这种研究需要这种活动。它将有助于理解当代美国的历史、政治和文化，并将规划出将其变形的前景想象到21世纪的方法。

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.