After Katrina: Race, Neoliberalism, and the End of the American Century

Description

Through the lens provided by the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, After Katrina argues that the city of New Orleans emerges as a key site for exploring competing narratives of US decline and renewal at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Deploying an interdisciplinary approach to explore cultural representations of the post-storm city, Anna Hartnell suggests that New Orleans has been reimagined as a laboratory for a racialized neoliberalism, and as such might be seen as a terminus of the American dream. This US disaster zone has unveiled a network of social and environmental crises that demonstrate that prospects of social mobility have dwindled as environmental degradation and coastal erosion emerge as major threats not just to the quality of life but to the possibility of life in coastal communities across America and the world. And yet After Katrina also suggests that New Orleans culture offers a way of thinking about the United States in terms that transcend the binary of national renewal or declension. The post-Hurricane city thus emerges as a flashpoint for reflecting on the contemporary United States. Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: “Is This America?” New Orleans and the Death Drive On Ruins, Redemption, and a Post-American World Overview Part I: American Time 1. New Orleans and Empire: Legacies from the “Age of Revolution” Bounding Empire: “Homeland” and the Transnational Prison-Industrial Complex New Orleans, 2005; Port-au-Prince, 2010 Writing Revolution Conclusion: A Caribbean City? 2. New Orleans and Americanization: “Progress,” “Decline,” and Tourism in the Twentieth Century From Nouvelle Orleans to “The City that Care Forgot” “America’s Most Romantic City”: Selling Slavery, Erasing Race “Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans?”: Tourism and Culture after Katrina Conclusion: Walking in New Orleans Part II: Katrina Time 3. Documenting Katrina: The Return of the “Real” “Not as Seen on TV” Trouble the Water as “Cruel Optimism” Land of Opportunity and the “Affect Economy” Conclusion: Documenting Katrina Time 4. Resisting Katrina: The Right to Return Right to Housing Right to Education Right to the City Conclusion: Public Time Part III: New Orleans Time 5. New Orleans and Water: Remapping Ecologies of the Gulf South Conquering Water: The Struggle for New Orleans Conceding to Water: The Struggle for the Lower Ninth Ward Between Land and Water: Louisiana’s Retreating Frontier Conclusion: Slow Time? 6. New Orleans and the Nation: Legacies from the Future Dead Cities The Exceptional City The Liquid City Conclusion: Beyond America Notes Select Bibliography Index