Introduction: Old and New Media After Katrina

Abstract

This book considers the media textuality of Hurricane Katrina, an event that signifies the radical eruption of incidents and images decisively outside the bounds of what is conceived as the American “way of life.”¹ In its aftermath we can glimpse the ways in which citizenship, consumerism, and charity are coming together in new formulations, often in attempts to reinforce state-sponsored Christian sanctimony, the stigmatization of the poor, and the need to negotiate white middle-class guilt in such a way that national identity myths remain unthreatened. For many, Hurricane Katrina manifested not only a profoundly unequal national culture and the rupture of the social contract, it also seemed to lay bare the normalization of risk in American life. As Wai Chee Dimock has observed, Katrina stands as a public event “that casts into doubt the efficacy and security of the nation.”²