ABSTRACT
The long-term political economy in which precarious lives are shaped was not part of public discourse when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. The activities and interpretive dynamics add critical temporal rhythms to the Katrina event, as they summon historical moments and personages belonging to a shadow world behind the world foregrounded in mainstream civic culture. The unnatural disaster of racism swept away the cars with which poor black people could have escaped Katrina. Not surprisingly, when Katrina hit, the hollowing out of the African American labor force had produced a statistic of 24.5 percent of the city's residents living below the poverty line. As for the ethico-political questions raised by the evocation of Katrina, Judith Butler challenges a linear reading of violence by questioning how we define an injurable or precarious life, how we grieve for some rather than others and how our perceptions are, ultimately, unknowing.
