Table Of ContentThe Time of CaTasTrophe
This book brings together a distinguished, interdisciplinary group of scholars
who offer a set of frameworks and a critical language for examining conventional
understandings of catastrophe and the catastrophic. framed around the ideas
of agamben, Kant and Benjamin, the volume demonstrates how the question
of ‘catastrophic time’ is in fact a question about something much more than the
frequency of disasters in our so-called ‘age of Catastrophe’.
Pervasive reporting of events has brought us back to the catastrophe as central to
governing. This imaginative collection refuses to define catastrophe as exceptional, or by
its limits in time and space. The chapters pose the times of catastrophe as multiple, in-
tegrating catastrophic events with the everyday and with how we envision futures. The
authors creatively cross critical theory with historical and cultural analyses, generating a
rich research agenda and teaching us all why we ought to turn to disaster to understand
governing.
susan sterett, Virginia Tech, Usa
The Time of Catastrophe poses critical questions about how we think about events,
conditions, and practices that have located humanity on the threshold of total destruction.
The chapters develop exciting and innovative bridges between theory and everyday life,
and offer compelling new possibilities for understanding the past, present, and future.
sylvia schafer, University of Connecticut, Usa
This timely collection shifts from the places of human catastrophes to a consideration of
their temporality. Innovative and challenging, the collection considers how catastrophes
are endured, remembered, and projected. Far from being a moment in time, whether in-
side or outside history, the chapters in this book establish the catastrophes as trajectories:
passages in time that mark our era.
ronen shamir, Tel-aviv University, israel
To Ben, with hope that he will live in better times (A.S.)
The Time of Catastrophe
multidisciplinary approaches to the age of Catastrophe
Edited by
ChrisTopher Dole
Amherst College, USA
roBerT hayashi
Amherst College, USA
anDrew poe
Amherst College, USA
aUsTin saraT
Amherst College, USA
Boris wolfson
Amherst College, USA
© Christopher Dole, robert hayashi, andrew poe, austin sarat and Boris wolfson 2015
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Christopher Dole, robert hayashi, andrew poe, austin sarat and Boris wolfson have
asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as
the editors of this work.
published by
ashgate publishing limited ashgate publishing Company
wey Court east 110 Cherry street
Union road suite 3-1
farnham Burlington, VT 05401-3818
surrey, GU9 7pT Usa
england
www.ashgate.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
a catalogue record for this book is available from the British library
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Dole, Christopher.
The time of catastrophe : multidisciplinary approaches to the age of catastrophe / by
Christopher Dole, robert hayashi, andrew poe, austin sarat and Boris wolfson.
pages cm. -- (law, justice and power)
includes bibliographical references and index.
isBn 978-1-4724-6836-9 (hardback : alk. paper) -- isBn 978-1-4724-6837-6 (ebook) --
isBn 978-1-4724-6838-3 (epub) 1. Disasters. 2. political psychology. i. Title.
hV553.D65 2015
363.34--dc23
2015012406
isBn: 9781472468369 (hbk)
isBn: 9781472468376 (ebk – pDf)
isBn: 9781472468383 (ebk – epUB)
printed in the United Kingdom by henry ling limited,
at the Dorset press, Dorchester, DT1 1hD
Contents
List of Figures vii
List of Contributors ix
Acknowledgments xi
When Is Catastrophe?: An Introduction 1
Christopher Dole, Robert Hayashi, Andrew Poe, Austin Sarat,
and Boris Wolfson
1 Catastrophe’s Apocalypse 19
Joseph Masco
2 Law and Community in Fritz Lang’s M., BBC’s Luther: Permanent
Catastrophe? 47
Elizabeth Stewart
3 Photographs of Catastrophe and the Representation of Vulnerable
Humanity 75
Carolyn J. Dean
4 Catastrophe and Human Order: From Political Theology to
Political Physiology 99
David W. Bates
5 Disaster, Ruin, and Permanent Catastrophe 125
Lewis R. Gordon
Index 143
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List of Figures
1.1 Stills from Power of Decision (1958, U.S. Air Force, courtesy of
the National Security Archive) 32
1.2 IPCC chart on climate change in the twenty-first century 35
1.3 Effect of carbon emissions on future sea levels, Unchained
Goddess (1958) 41
This page has been left blank intentionally
List of Contributors
David W. Bates, Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley received his PhD
in European History from the University of Chicago, where he specialized in the
French Enlightenment and the Revolutionary period. Since coming to Berkeley
in 1999, he has been working on two main research tracks: one on the history of
legal and political ideas, and the other on the relationship between technology,
science, and the history of human cognition. His recent book, States of War:
Enlightenment Origins of the Political, explores the invention of an autonomous
idea of political community in natural law thinkers, from Grotius and Hobbes
to Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. His forthcoming book, entitled Human
Insight: An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence focuses on the problem
of insight, or radical novelty, at the intersection of theories of knowledge,
media networks, machine technologies, concepts of the body, and practices of
industrial organization.
Carolyn J. Dean is Professor of History at Yale University. She was previously
John Hay Professor of International Studies at Brown, where she served as
interim director of the Watson Institute for International Studies and as Senior
Associate Dean of the Faculty from 2005–2011. She is the author of several books,
most recently Aversion and Erasure: The Fate of the Victim after the Holocaust
(Cornell, 2010), and the recipient of several fellowships including an ACLS and
a Guggenheim.
Lewis R. Gordon is Professor of Philosophy and Africana Studies, with affiliations
in Asian and Asian American Studies, Caribbean and Latino/a Studies, and Judaic
Studies, at UCONN-Storrs; European Union Visiting Chair in Philosophy at
Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France; and Nelson Mandela Visiting Professor
of Politics and International Studies at Rhodes University, South Africa. His most
recent book is What Fanon Said: A Philosophical Introduction to His Life and
Thought. His website is: http://lewisrgordon.com and he is on twitter at: https://
twitter.com/lewgord.
Joseph Masco, Professor of Anthropology and of the Social Sciences in the College
at the University of Chicago writes and teaches courses on science and technology,
U.S. national security culture, political ecology, mass media, and critical theory.
He is the author of The Nuclear Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in Post-Cold
War New Mexico (Princeton University Press, 2006), which won the 2008 Rachel
Carson Prize from the Society for the Social Studies of Science and the 2006
