Unfinished: “The Politics of Catastrophization”

Some scattered notes on the essay “the Politics of Catastrophization” by Adi Ophir, taken from the book “Contemporary States of Emergency.”

 

TWO TIERS OF CATASTROPHIZATION

• This phrase (catastrophization) is a neologism in pyschology which refers to an anxiety disorder in which mildly negative events are thought to have globally catastrophic effects.
• Psychologists see catastrophe as an individual disorder but politicians see “objective” catastrophes.

• A sudden rise in…the ‘volume of evils’ and an accompanying decline in the means to deal with them…a process in which natural and man-made forces and factors work together to create devastating effects on a large population. [p.60]

• We are far removed of purely natural catastrophe.
• Today, entire regions are catastrophized.
• “Catastrophization” =/= Catastrophe
• Catastrophization transforms space and time. Catastrophes leave a mark on space and time.

C = Catastrophe, C1 = Catastrophization

• In a C, space is deterritorialized and a “zone of disaster” is reterritorialized inside of it. Order crumbles, normalcy dissolves, movements and communication are reduced.
• In a C, time is marked off as a terrible present from a peaceful past “before it all happened,” and a future “when it’s over…”
• In a C, one can only imagine a “leap” into the future.
• Time is transformed into sequences of waiting for a new normalcy.
• This temporality is partly objective given the ruins and frequency of “event.” Waiting becomes torture.
• C1 is different. It is a process not an event.
• C1 is often imperceptible.
• During C1, C is imminent and therefore has not happened. This suspended state produces the urgency of an emergency but with the power of political manipulation and mythology.

• C1 is a discourse of government. But there are still two connotations:
  1. An object of interest to governors who use C1to control people, places, things.
  2. A process made to appear, take shape, and assume specific dimensions through a discourse that articulates all evil as imminently catastrophic

  These two connotations are practically inseperable.

• (1) is “objective” – it occurs when people cause massive devastation. (2) is discursive. It happens when accidents or failures or violences are named in a fashion which lends them an urgent temporality such as “humanitarian emergency,” “catastrophe,” or “natural disaster.”
• Through (2), naming and describing events, (1) can happen. Intervention and manipulation of people, places, and things.
• The discursive is not a distortion of the “real.” It is the conceptual precondition for action.
• Actual and discursive C1 may occur at the same time but there is always a gap between the two.
  

  Often, discourse records what nature, governments, and other powerful agencies have caused or have failed to do, and traces their policies and actions in the debris they leave behind. [p.64]

• Less often, discursive C1 precedes an actual event thus preparing or mitigating the events or at least pretending to.
• The gap between (1) and (2) is not only temporal. Acts or inaction may cause quick or gradual C for populations. If this is caused by government, the effects are hidden or quickly explained. C1, then, would inspect and map out these effects to create a “continuous gaze” so an emergency can be named later or can be named “on the verge.”
• In this sense, C1 is meant to redefine the “normal” as dangerous and intolerable and to mobilize assistance based on this. This is how a demand for an exceptional situation is created.

US [//THRESHOLD//] DISASTER

It may have already been crossed, with or without notice, it may be declared as imminent or too close, but in any case, by the very fact that it has been stated, invoking the crossing of this imaginary threshold is an appeal for an exceptional response. [p.64]

• C1 imposes a focal point of attention:

1. The Future
2. Unfolding
3. Protracted and not perceived

 

“Disaster lies in the future”

• Anticipation and preparedness are mobilized to ward off or survive a threat.

“Disaster is unfolding.”

• Patterns of expansion must be monitored and contained. Effects must be mitigated.

“Disaster is protracted and not perceived or experienced as such”

• The long-term deterioration or impoverished living conditions of a population must be articulated and it’s results coped with.

Discursive C1 may legitimize the political generation of a C and mobilized people to take part in it. [p.65]

• This is perceived as an attempt to mitigate effects and reallocate risk. May suspend a C by promoting surveillance over the source of a C.

LEGITIMIZATION

• By portraying an enemy as an agent of C, C1 discourse creates political tolerance for the use of catastrophic preventive repression. Example: racial discourse C1 the presence of the other and satisfies destructive force on the grounds that a race is imminently and naturally dangerous. Furthermore, the security of one group may justify, by itself, the elimination of another.

 

MITIGATION AND REALLOCATION OF RISK

• C1 discourse may be used as a “call to arms” to everyone. It designates restructuring to “decatastrophize” via the social compulsion.
  These strategies are:

1. Containment
2. Preparedness
3. Mitigation

• Demarcating a threshold forces those outside a territory into “out of focus.”

SUSPENSION

• The “out of focus” threshold serves as a border for government. If government goes there, they risk delegitimizing themselves for collusion with the enemy or for not taking care of those they abandoned.

They C1, but they wish to keep the C itself in suspension, not removing its threat or its causes, and at the same time not letting something that may be grasped as a C happen either. [p.67]

• This suspension creates collusion between the C1 forces and those producing the C1 discourse. They are normally opposed but now they share a desire to denaturalize and deactualize the C.
  Example: Israeli occupation in Palestine. Controlled C that is named as such. This naming justifies more control.

THRESHOLD AND EXCEPTION

• Discursive C1 is not the same as reflecting on a past event, ie counting dead bodies after Katrina. It is not the same as taking account, trying to understand etc.
• Since WWII, and especially since end of Cold War, C1 has been depoliticized and now appears almost only in statistical jargon.
• The common thread is the need for urgency. This presentation does not appear for analysis of “natural” conditions.
• Humanitarian groups often see stats quantitatively and use only numbers to determine urgency.Example: Tuberculosis is an emergency because it kills 2 million people per year.
• The most important feature of C1: to determine when a threshold has been crossed and to invoke exceptional action.
• Sometimes a “state of alert” is invoked before the line has even been crossed in order to avoid it. Thus, a double threshold: the emergency, and then the threat of emergency.

A legally, politically, or governmentally declared state of exception, like the humanitarian alert, is meant to avert or preempt a true state of exception. [p.71]

• NGO’s have demonopolized exceptional power away from the sovereign. In humanitarian perspective, the human condition itself is the catastrophe.
• p.71 – “complex humanitarian emergencies” are indifferent to the source of evil.
• Operationalizing humanitarian emergencies is aimed at sovereign power. It names a territory that needs to be made more governable.

11.30.2013
C. Amen