public disasters
Jordan Crandall (xaf@interport.net)
Wed, 02 Jul 1997 15:48:18 -0400
Greg
Could you tell us more about your planned investigations of public
disasters as figures or metaphors for identity formations? It would be
interesting to know how the "EmerAgency" is to articulate and intervene.
I'm wondering if it relates to the type of public space that Mark
Seltzer sees emerging around the accident or open wound -- a kind of
"pathological public sphere" -- that relates to subjectivization
processes, body/technology distinctions, the crossing of public and
private spaces and desires, and so on. (Seltzer: "the rushing to the
scene of the accident, the milling around the point of impact, has come
to make up a *wound culture*: the public fascination with torn and
opened bodies and torn and opened persons, a collective gathering around
shock, trauma, and the wound.") Are you looking at the conflux of
bodies, phychic orders, representation forms, as mobilized around, and
encoded in, the collective site of the public disaster?
How will this engage the instrumental problem-solving approach that you
mention (as particular to the humanities and fine arts)?