Disastrous Social Theory—Lessons From New Orleans

Abstract

Contemporary social theory struggles to deal with disasters not just because of epistemological shortcomings regarding the continued dualistic nature of its dealings with social phenomena and events, relegating disasters to the real of “extraordinary events,” but also because it has effectively foreclosed on its ability to deal with social reality. The latter is less the consequence of epistemic shortcomings but itself a social by-product of the institutionalization of social thought in the academy. Divorced from an ability to come to terms with social reality, because it lacks both an empirical grounding and a sense of urgency to understand that which lies outside the comfort zone of academic life, social theory is left rather aimlessly afloat amid a sea of debris that signals that the apocalypse has already happened.