U UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI Date: August 12, 2009 I, Kirk Boyle , hereby submit this original work as part of the requirements for the degree of: Doctor of Philosophy in English and Comparative Literature It is entitled: The Catastrophic Real: Late Capitalism and Other Naturalized Disasters Kirk Boyle Student Signature: This work and its defense approved by: Committee Chair: Beth Ash Stanley Corkin Jana Braziel Approval of the electronic document: I have reviewed the Thesis/Dissertation in its final electronic format and certify that it is an accurate copy of the document reviewed and approved by the committee. Committee Chair signature: Beth Ash & Stanley Corkin The Catastrophic Real: Late Capitalism and Other Naturalized Disasters by Kirk Boyle, B.A., M.A. A dissertation submitted in conformity with the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and Comparative Literature, College of Arts and Sciences, at the University of Cincinnati 12 August 2009 Committee Co-Chairs: Dr. Beth Ash & Dr. Stanley Corkin ABSTRACT The 2005 landfall of Hurricane Katrina entrenched natural disaster studies within the disciplinary territory of the social sciences. For scholars of this specialized field of knowledge, examining the geological and hydrometerological aspects of the largest natural disaster in the history of the United States made little sense without also asserting its historical origins and societal impact. One goal of this dissertation is to secure the human concerns of natural disaster studies further by aligning them with a singular historical social science, a Marxist paradigm that reframes contemporary natural disasters as misfortunes inherent to the neoliberal form of late capitalism. Although Marxism provides the most expansive view of the unnatural forces of natural disasters, this approach itself must be philosophically generous and rigorous, not politically expedient, hence I clarify the ontological status of natural disasters by enlisting reinforcements from the humanities—existential philosophy and Lacanian psychoanalysis. The second goal of this dissertation is to redress a deficiency in the social scientific approach to the cultural representation of natural disasters, which is undeveloped and still largely beholden to positivist methodologies. Drawing on the jointly Marxist and psychoanalytic approach developed by dialectical thinkers like Frederic Jameson and Slavoj Žižek, I show how literary and cultural imaginations of catastrophes shape their real formation within the capitalist world-economy. A comparative analysis of the recent Hollywood disaster films Children of Men (2006) and I Am Legend (2007) demonstrates the divergent response of progressives and conservatives to what Naomi Klein dubs “disaster capitalism.” While some works of mass culture disguise and expose the role of the political economy in exacerbating the disastrous effects of so-called natural disasters, others naturalize economic crises. Close readings of The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) and Knowing (2009) unearth both ideological and utopian projections of the current “global financial crisis.” 2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My gratitude extends to several sources. The Charles Phelps Taft Research Center and the University Research Council granted fellowships that helped me see this project through to completion. Dr. Jonathan Kamholtz scraped together funding to keep me around a fifth year, and Dr. Russel Durst offered me a generous professional and financial opportunity as his research assistant. The English Department staff—Geri Hinkle-Wesseling, Devore Nixon, and Jessica Vieson—was priceless, and so was the much tasked Langsam Library staff. I have been fortunate to work with three first-rate professors during the drafting of this manuscript. Beth Ash and Stanley Corkin not only instructed me on every word herein, they played a central role in each stage of my graduate training. Their reputation as challenging, rigorous, and intellectually stimulating professors precedes them. I consider Jana Braziel a role model and friend. I do not think I will meet another scholar as tireless as she. Thanks also to professors Jonathan Alexander, Tom LeClair, Norma Jenckes, Leland Person, and Jay Twomey for their guidance along this crazy trip known as graduate school. Dr. Julia LeSage at Jump Cut proved to be an impeccable editor of what became chapter two, and I thank her for including my work in the 51st issue of the journal. Dr. Michael Lindell and his colleagues at the International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters contributed a valuable insider’s take on the social scientific observations in chapter one. Dr. David Laibman and the editors of Science & Society also provided extensive feedback on this chapter, which I intend to revise and resubmit to their publication. The love and support of Ed, Linda, Kelly, and Katie Boyle carried me through the “I can’t go on, I’ll go on” moments of writing, like always. Fellow travelers Daniel Mrozowski, Matthew Feltman, Jeremy Withers, and Byron Bailey supplied much needed camaraderie. As for the rest of my friends from graduate school and elsewhere, I toast you heartily. Amber Leab deserves special mention. She is the most wonderful live-in editor I could ask for, of my work and my life. For all she has given me, I dedicate this work to her. All errors, omissions, and misinterpretations in the present draft are singularly mine. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: The Need for a Cultural Studies of Natural Disaster 5 Chapter One: Natural Disasters as Late Capitalist Disasters: Realigning Natural Disaster Studies 14 Chapter Two: Children of Men and I Am Legend: The Disaster-Capitalism Complex Hits Hollywood 64 Chapter Three: Ontological Difference and the Catastrophic Real: A Lacanian Intervention into Natural Disaster Studies 99 Chapter Four: Late Capitalist Disasters as Natural Disasters: Metaphoric Projections of the “Global Financial Crisis” 158 Bibliography 218 4 Introduction: The Need for a Cultural Studies of Natural Disaster It seems to be easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; perhaps that is due to some weakness in our imaginations...for us time consists in an eternal present and, much farther away, an inevitable catastrophe… -Frederic Jameson …to say that class structure is becoming representable means that we have now gone beyond mere abstract understanding and entered that whole area of personal fantasy, collective storytelling, narrative figurability—which is the domain of culture and no longer that of abstract sociology or economic analysis. -Frederic Jameson In geology’s formative years at the beginning of the 18th century, the naturalist Georges Cuvier proposed a radical theory that life on earth had suffered a series of “revolutions,” cataclysmic events that resulted in mass extinctions. What came to be popularly known as the theory of catastrophism gained acceptance through its unique mix of religious and geoscientific interpretation of empirical evidence, a synthesis that enabled the Book of Genesis’ story of the Great Flood to co-exist with an exponentially increasing fossil record. While Protestant endorsements of catastrophism posited the intervention of a deity’s agency in natural history, Sir Charles Lyell, among others, rejected the belief in God’s hand puncturing the fabric of reality to tear it asunder and start anew, and proposed in its stead one of the pillars of Darwin’s theory of evolution—gradualism, the belief that geologic change occurs slowly over long periods of time. The only way to logically conceive of such dramatic alterations to landscapes and species was to imagine millennia’s worth of accumulated alterations. By most scientific accounts, Cuvier’s earlier theory of catastrophism, minus its theological trappings, has proven to have more legs than was once thought. The theory of “punctual equilibrium,” developed by evolutionary biologists like Stephen Jay Gould, represents a kind of Aufhebung, a dialectical overcoming, of Cuvier’s and Lyell’s positions. It is now generally accepted that long periods of ordinary time—to borrow a term from the Catholic 5 Church—are occasionally interrupted by the rarest of events: giant meteor strike, sudden climate change, super volcano eruption, etc. These global catastrophes redirect the course of world history irrevocably. The contingency inherent in the theory of punctuated equilibrium, the idea that at any moment a random and unpredictable event can change the structure of reality dramatically, is a defining characteristic of modernity, of what it means to live in the post-teleological, “all that is solid melts into air” world. In particular, catastrophism has experienced a resurgence in the last few decades of this modern age, during the period commonly referred to as post-modernity. At least three major theories have risen to popularity during this time as part of the catastrophism renaissance. In philosophy, postmodern theory promotes an “incredulity towards meta-narratives” like the gradualist beliefs in the progress of history and the advancement of scientific knowledge. In rejecting universals and foundations, postmodern theory opts for a relativistic worldview. No wonder that one of its foremost advocates, Jean-François Lyotard, cites the sublime “pure event” of the sun’s death in 4.5 billion years to affirm the postmodern condition of permanent transitoriness, of “matter taken as an arrangement of energy