The Time of Catastrophe

Reviews / Votes

"Pervasive reporting of events has brought us back to the catastrophe as central to governing. This imaginative collection refuses to define catastrophe as exceptional, or by its limits in time and space. The chapters pose the times of catastrophe as multiple, integrating catastrophic events with the everyday and with how we envision futures. The authors creatively cross critical theory with historical and cultural analyses, generating a rich research agenda and teaching us all why we ought to turn to disaster to understand governing." - Susan Sterett, Virginia Tech, USA

"The Time of Catastrophe poses critical questions about how we think about events, conditions, and practices that have located humanity on the threshold of total destruction. The chapters develop exciting and innovative bridges between theory and everyday life, and offer compelling new possibilities for understanding the past, present, and future." - Sylvia Schafer, University of Connecticut, USA

"This timely collection shifts from the places of human catastrophes to a consideration of their temporality. Innovative and challenging, the collection considers how catastrophes are endured, remembered, and projected. Far from being a moment in time, whether inside or outside history, the chapters in this book establish the catastrophes as trajectories: passages in time that mark our era." - Ronen Shamir, Tel-Aviv University, Israel