Editorial: A catastrophic event
Editorial: A catastrophic event
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社论：灾难性事件
DOI：
10.1080/13604813.2017.1348743
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发表时间：
2017
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
David J. Madden
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
David J. Madden
为格伦费尔伸张正义。来源：Paul Watt， 2017。“这确实是一个可怕的想法，但格伦费尔行动小组坚信，只有灾难性的事件才能暴露出我们房东的无能和无能，并结束他们对租户和租赁人施加的危险生活条件和忽视健康和安全立法的情况。”“格伦费尔行动小组（2016）”无论是否明确说明，管理人口的每一项政治努力都涉及不稳定性的战术分配，通常是通过不稳定性的不平等分配来表达的，这种不平等分配取决于关于谁的生活是可悲的，值得保护的，谁的生活是不可悲的，或者是轻微的或偶然的可悲的，因此，从这个意义上说，已经部分或全部失去了。因此不值得保护和维持。——朱迪思·巴特勒（Judith Butler, 2012, 148）“我们希望什么？”康德把这个问题和另外两个问题一起用第一人称单数提出：我能知道什么？我该怎么办呢？他认为这本质上标志着人类的状况。经过两个世纪的哲学思考，这些问题似乎最好换成第一人称复数……激进的希望预示着一种美好，而那些有希望的人却缺乏适当的概念来理解它。这样的希望有什么理由呢？乔纳森·李尔（2006,103）任何观察过格伦费尔大厦致命大火及其混乱后果的人都不会怀疑，这正是居民们所担心的灾难性事件。从6月14日星期三凌晨开始，伦敦内西区北肯辛顿的24层公共住宅大楼迅速被一场无法控制的大火吞噬。确切的死亡人数仍在统计中，但截至撰写本文时，至少有79人死亡。数十名家庭成员和邻居失踪。数十名幸存者正在医院接受治疗。数百人无家可归，失去了一切。地方当局和威斯敏斯特政府的反应混乱而不充分，引发了类似抵抗运动的抗议活动。人们很快发现，租户和居民组织，如格伦费尔行动小组，多年来一直在呼吁人们关注这座建筑的灾难风险。大楼没有全楼范围的警报或喷水灭火系统，只有一个逃生楼梯。最近的装修工作也可能增加了火灾的风险。提出这些担忧的租户非但没有得到重视，反而受到了市政委员会的积极威胁。火灾发生后，有报道称，业主肯辛顿和切尔西租户管理组织（Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation）在翻新塔楼的外部包层时，可能选择了不合格的材料，实际上是易燃材料，以节省成本。随着这张照片的曝光，民众的愤怒与日俱增。越来越多的情况表明，塔楼里的工薪阶层居民一直生活在致命的危险之中，而这对于肯辛顿和切尔西皇家自治市的富裕邻居来说是永远无法容忍的。
Justice for Grenfell. Source: Paul Watt, 2017. ‘It is a truly terrifying thought but the Grenfell Action Group firmly believe that only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord … and bring an end to the dangerous living conditions and neglect of health and safety legislation that they inflict upon their tenants and leaseholders.’Grenfell Action Group (2016) ‘Whether explicitly stated or not, every political effort to manage populations involves a tactical distribution of precarity, more often than not articulated through an unequal distribution of precarity, one that depends on dominant norms regarding whose life is grievable and worth protecting and whose life is ungrievable, or marginally or episodically grievable and so, in that sense, already lost in part or in whole, and thus less worthy of protection and sustenance.’Judith Butler (2012, 148) ‘For what may we hope? Kant put this question in the first-person singular along with two others—What can I know? and What ought I to do?—that he thought essentially marked the human condition. With two centuries of philosophical reflection, it seems that these questions are best transposed to the first-person plural … . Radical hope anticipates a good for which those who have the hope as yet lack the appropriate concepts with which to understand it. What would it be for such hope to be justified?’ Jonathan Lear (2006, 103) No one who observed the deadly fire in Grenfell Tower or its chaotic aftermath can doubt that it constituted precisely the catastrophic event that its residents feared. Beginning in the early morning hours of Wednesday, the 14th of June, the 24-storey public housing block in North Kensington, in inner west London, was rapidly consumed by an uncontrollable conflagration. The exact number of fatalities is still being tallied, but as of this writing, at least seventy-nine people have died. Scores of family members and neighbours are missing. Dozens of those who survived are in hospital. Hundreds of people were made homeless and have lost everything. The disorganised and inadequate response by local authorities and the Westminster government spurred protests that resembled a resistance movement. It quickly emerged that tenant and resident organisations, such as the Grenfell Action Group, had been calling attention to the risk of disaster in the building for years. The tower lacked a building-wide alarm or sprinkler system and contained only a single staircase for escape. Recent renovation work may also have contributed to the risk of fire. Rather than being heeded, tenants who raised these concerns were actively threatened by the council. Following the fire, reports suggested that when refurbishing the tower’s exterior cladding, the landlord, the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation, may have opted for substandard, in fact flammable materials in pursuit of cost savings. As this picture emerged, popular outrage grew. Increasingly it seems that the tower’s largely working-class residents had been living with a level of deadly risk that would never have been tolerated for their wealthier neighbours in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.