Katrina and Colonialism: The Sins of Our Forefathers Perpetuated?

Hurricane Katrina and its effects are often talked about in terms of what has been made visible, as if the hurricane swept through and stripped away our structural blinders along with the levees, revealing social disparities within. Here, we focus instead on whom and what Katrina and its aftermath have rendered invisible. We are concerned with how the seen and the not seen have influenced the ways the purported tabula rasa of New Orleans has been (re)constructed and marked since 2005. We engage with recent debates in political science about power, agency, structure, and culpability, arguing that efforts to prioritize the pursuit of culpability over critique in power analyses, such as the approach advocated by Steven Lukes, risk perpetuating structural violence. We employ the concepts of an ocular ethic and social triage to understand why the storm of the century that was supposed to reveal all has in the end left much concealed, with shocking levels of human devastation unaddressed. Only through careful excavation of the ruins can we begin to comprehend the sedimented inequality and layers of vulnerability that structure violence.

show abstract

Designing cultural policy in a postcolonial colony: the case of Puerto Rico

Hernández-Acosta

2015

International Journal of Cultural Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.

Contact Info

hi@scite.ai

10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614

Henderson, NV 89052, USA

Blog Terms and Conditions API Terms Privacy Policy Contact Cookie Preferences Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information

Made with 💙 for researchers

Part of the Research Solutions Family.

Katrina and Colonialism: The Sins of Our Forefathers Perpetuated?

Cited by 5 publications

References 13 publications

The mayor or the people? Indigenous identity and differences in managerial practices

The mayor or the people? Indigenous identity and differences in managerial practices

Culpability, Social Triage, and Structural Violence in the Aftermath of Katrina

Designing cultural policy in a postcolonial colony: the case of Puerto Rico

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About