It might be interesting to ask how catastrophes affect our understanding of the nature of history, and the possibilities/limitations of human agency within history. A comparison with the category of ‘revolution’ may be revealing here:
Revolution: “C14: via Old French from Late Latin revolutio, from Latin revolvere to REVOLVE.” (Collins English Dictionary, 1986)
Revolutions ‘revolve’. The etymology suggests the (ancient? medieval?) view of history as cyclical. But after 1789 a ‘revolution’ need not be understood as a repetition of previous events, but as a radical break with the past. History became linear, not cyclical. Events could be unprecedented, and the past be broken with.
How about catastrophes? Do catastrophes reveal what has always been the case? The return of the repressed? Are they, as Blanchot says, “that which is most ancient […] that which has always long since disappeared beneath ruins” (The Writing of the Disaster, p.37)? Or do they constitute radical breaks with the past?
Was the French Revolution a political catastrophe? Did it open up to the imagination the possibility of man-made catastrophe, and the potential for human agency to radically affect change? But perhaps the French Revolution was also an ‘overturning’ that revealed no more than the ancient potential for political violence, the fall of kings, etc.
Whether catastrophes are conceptualized as ancient or as radically new may affect our understanding of the nature and narrative possibilities of (human?) history. This might also impact upon the question raised in Friday’s seminar as to whether modernity itself can be understood as a catastrophe. Perhaps modernity is catastrophic (with radical newness) because it is the age in which technology has developed such that it can destroy the earth (nuclear weaponry, global warming, etc). Or perhaps modernity is catastrophic because it is the age in which catastrophes (the ‘overturnings’ that reveal an ancient, violent underbelly) have become unsurprising: standard episodes of human history?
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With reference to the idea of Modernity being a catastrophe (or at least being catastrophic) I think it's necessary to distinguish between man-made and natural catastrophes.
Reading the article by Gene Ray, that Steven pointed us to, is helpful because he quotes Adorno as distinguishing between natural disasters of the 'first nature'(ie of the natural world) and disasters of the 'second nature'(ie 'social' disasters like Auschwitz).
Gene Ray reveals that Adorno believed that disasters of the 'second nature' were only possible because of the 'structural barbarism' of society. Following on from this line of reasoning we can see Modernity as one long, continuous catastrophe because it enables catastrophes of the 'second nature.' Taking this further, catastrophes of the 'second nature' are only the symptoms of our much larger catastrophic condition.
These ideas are interesting as a critique of Modernity, but I can't help but feel they need to be tempered or challenged. Not that I want to get into the dangerous territory of claiming that catastrophes are necessary evils in mankind's march of progress...
It's also interesting to note that it is becoming increasingly difficult to make a distinction between man-made and natural disasters in a time when many catastrophic meteorological events (eg New Orleans) are blamed on global warming, which is itself a man-made disaster.
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