Progressive Geographies

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What is the sig­ni­fic­ance of ‘post’ in post-​disaster, post-​conflict and post-​crisis, and how might we ana­lyze the sim­il­ar­ities in the gov­ern­mental re­sponses to eco­nomic, in­fra­struc­tural and so­ci­etal dis­rup­tion? We con­tend that, des­pite dis­cip­linary bound­aries which sep­arate the study of war, eco­nomy and dis­aster, im­portant in­sights can be gained through an in­ter­dis­cip­linary ex­plor­a­tion of the way that events are bounded by con­cep­tions of tem­por­ality and re­spons­ib­ility. Events are con­sti­tuted through both an­ti­cip­a­tion and re­mem­brance. The bound­aries of ‘be­fore’ and ‘after’ help to for­mu­late events as ‘mo­ments’ of dis­rup­tion which punc­tuate equi­lib­rium and ne­ces­sitate cor­rective gov­ernance. This is often un­der­taken with scant re­gard for the struc­tures that amp­lify and gen­erate their im­pact, or their on­going ef­fects. Slow-​burning crises are par­tic­u­larly sus­cept­ible to being-​made-​silent within this frame.

The re­si­li­ence dis­course, which has tra­versed studies and policies of eco­nomy, con­flict pre­ven­tion and dis­aster man­age­ment, is paradig­matic with re­gard to con­tem­porary event-​thinking. Resilience ima­gines a field of ac­tion com­prised of ab­stract sys­tems which, when dis­rupted, can re­turn to equi­lib­rium through cor­rective ac­tion. The mo­ment of the event is con­cluded, and tem­por­ally bounded, when this ima­gined equi­lib­rium is re­con­sti­t­uted. The crisis be­comes ‘post-​‘. Such closure through ‘post-​’ tends to al­le­viate poli­cy­makersfrom the need to ad­dress ques­tions of ‘whose dis­aster’, the on­going ex­per­i­ence of ef­fects, on­going and slow-​burning crises, and struc­tural re­spons­ib­il­ities for the caus­a­tion of disaster.

The ques­tion of tem­por­al­ities is in­ter­esting, both with re­gards to the de­ploy­ment of dis­crete bounded mo­ments of crisis – and the fea­tures of post-​conflict, post-​disaster and post-​crisis which sub­vert and ex­ceed this ren­dering. ‘Post-​’ does not quite ac­count for the real­ities of memory and on­going ex­per­i­ences of sup­posedly closed events; public dis­courses and prac­tices of com­mem­or­a­tion can upset the ap­plic­a­tion of bounded limits upon crises, such as memory prac­tices en­acted in ten­sion with de­term­in­a­tions of re­con­cili­ation or claims made upon post-​disaster lands contra the man­euv­ering of ‘dis­aster cap­it­al­ists’. Events linger on in the era of ‘post-​’, des­pite ef­forts to con­tain them within tem­poral and con­cep­tual bounds.

The work­shop is funded by the Institute of Advanced Study and the Global Governance GRP, University of Warwick. It will take place at Milburn house, Institute of Advanced Study, 18th June 2014. And is or­gan­ised by Charlotte Heath-​Kelly & Illan Rua Wall

Please re­gister here (places are free and lunch will be provided) if you plan on attending.