This collection gathers some of the critical writing on the reconstruction of New Orleans since the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster. We still find it hard to believe that twenty years have passed and that there are many New Orleanians and Americans, for that matter, with little or no recollection of the disaster. This collection is intended as a primer for those unfamiliar with this catastrophic historic event and its manifold social and political impacts on the city and American life more generally. We also hope this collection will appeal to those who want to dive deeper into the city’s recovery saga, interrogating the real winners and losers in the market-centric reconstruction of the last twenty years. Most of all, we hope that this collection will resonate with those who are not satisfied with the current state of affairs in this country, defined by a nationwide affordable housing crisis, eviscerated public institutions, deepening wealth inequality, increasing political violence and racism, and a tech-broligarchy that threatens even the most basic tenets of liberal democratic citizenship.
Much has been written about New Orleans in the last twenty years, but not all of this writing has been especially helpful or illuminating. Many early interpretations of the Katrina disaster quickly cohered around a racial justice perspective, which rehearsed familiar narratives of the color line as the central axis of conflict in American life. The truth of such narratives seemed undeniable in the face of the news footage, testimonies, and imagery of mostly black New Orleanians stranded in the flooded city and struggling to survive amid chaos and little government rescue and relief. Such narratives often ignored the class character of the disaster, however, and thus were inadequate for understanding the neoliberal incursion that followed.
As the waters receded and Minerva’s owl took flight, more complex analysis became possible. The blackness of stranded New Orleanians was apparent, but their position among the most submerged layers of the region’s working class, largely comprised of service industry workers, was not. One of the earliest voices to pierce the dominant racial justice consensus among academics and pundits was Adolph Reed, Jr., and his sharp, courageous analysis on the pages of the Nation and Progressive magazines and in various media interviews would provoke many of the writers included here toward a critical perspective on the disaster grounded in a critique of neoliberalization. We are deeply indebted to his formative and many contributions to our collective understandings of post-Katrina New Orleans, not as some exception to American politics but as ground zero of market-driven experimentation and neoliberal urbanism.
The contributions to this symposium have been republished with minimal editing. The dateline of their initial publication is noted in the title of each. We’ve decided to publish them in this way and with only minor edits because these articles are historical documents, and each reflects particular moments in the city’s transformation and their authors’ attempts to think through that contingency. We encourage you all to take a deeper dive, purchase the books these articles are taken from, and explore many of the historical and documentary film treatments of New Orleans and the Katrina disaster. We believe the perspectives offered here remain critical to our understanding of New Orleans, cities across the globe, and, perhaps most importantly, the dangers of this new historical moment.
We would like to acknowledge the editorial efforts of Raquel Belden and Todd Cronan and all their patience, wherewithal, heavy lifting, and acumen in bringing this double-issue to life. This collection would not be possible without the labors and keen intellect of Todd Cronan, Thomas Jessen Adams, Jamie Peck, Vincanne Adams, Nicole Trujillo-Pagan, John Arena, and Adolph. We would like to thank all our contributors for agreeing to include their works here and ask for forgiveness from our comrades and fellow travelers who have produced equally great, insightful work on the subject that is not included in this collection. We would also like to acknowledge the journals and presses that granted permission to reprint the following selections:
Jamie Peck, “Neoliberal Hurricane: Who Framed New Orleans?,” Socialist Register 43 (2007): 102–29. www.socialistregister.com
Nicole Trujillo-Pagan, “Hazardous Constructions: Mexican Immigrant Masculinity and the Rebuilding of New Orleans,” in The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism and the Remaking of New Orleans, ed. Cedric Johnson (University of Minnesota Press, 2011). www.upress.umn.edu
Vincanne Adams, “Charity, Philanthrocapitalism, and the Affect Economy,” in Markets of Sorrow, Labors of Faith: New Orleans in the Wake of Katrina (Duke University Press, 2013). www.dukuepress.edu
An earlier version of Thomas J. Adams’s article was published as Thomas Jessen Adams, “The Political Economy of Invisibility in Twenty-First-Century New Orleans: Security, Hospitality and the Post-Disaster City,” in Hurricane Katrina in Transatlantic Perspective, ed. Romain Huret and Randy Sparks (Louisiana State University, 2014). www.lsupress.org
John Arena, “Whose City Is It? Hurricane Katrina and the Struggle for New Orleans’s Public Housing, 2003-2008,” in Driven From New Orleans: How Non-Profits Betray Public Housing and Promote Privatization (University of Minnesota Press, 2012). www.upress.umn.edu
Cedric G. Johnson, “What’s Left for New Orleans? The People’s Reconstruction and the Limits of Anarcho-Liberalism,” in Remaking New Orleans: Beyond Exceptionalism and Authenticity, ed. Thomas Jessen Adams and Matt Sakakeeny (Duke University Press, 2019), 261–87. Copyright 2019, Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. www.dukuepress.edu
Megan French-Marcelin is a twentieth-century historian of urban policy and planning. Her work is primarily concerned with the origins of neoliberalism in the marriage of federal urban aid and local economic development. French-Marcelin has written about New Orleans, local politics, and socioeconomic inequality.
French-Marcelin currently serves as the Senior Director of Policy at the Legal Action Center, where she spearheads state-level centered on providing access to healthcare for justice-involved New Yorkers. She holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University in U.S. History, is the author of several scholarly articles, and has written for publications including Jacobin, NY Daily News, Los Angeles Times, and Jadalyyia.
This collection gathers some of the critical writing on the reconstruction of New Orleans since the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster. We still find it hard to believe that twenty years have passed and that there are many New Orleanians and Americans, for that matter, with little or no recollection of the disaster. This collection is intended as a primer for those unfamiliar with this catastrophic historic event and its manifold social and political impacts on the city and American life more generally. We also hope this collection will appeal to those who want to dive deeper into the city’s recovery saga, interrogating the real winners and losers in the market-centric reconstruction of the last twenty years. Most of all, we hope that this collection will resonate with those who are not satisfied with the current state of affairs in this country, defined by a nationwide affordable housing crisis, eviscerated public institutions, deepening wealth inequality, increasing political violence and racism, and a tech-broligarchy that threatens even the most basic tenets of liberal democratic citizenship.
Much has been written about New Orleans in the last twenty years, but not all of this writing has been especially helpful or illuminating. Many early interpretations of the Katrina disaster quickly cohered around a racial justice perspective, which rehearsed familiar narratives of the color line as the central axis of conflict in American life. The truth of such narratives seemed undeniable in the face of the news footage, testimonies, and imagery of mostly black New Orleanians stranded in the flooded city and struggling to survive amid chaos and little government rescue and relief. Such narratives often ignored the class character of the disaster, however, and thus were inadequate for understanding the neoliberal incursion that followed.
As the waters receded and Minerva’s owl took flight, more complex analysis became possible. The blackness of stranded New Orleanians was apparent, but their position among the most submerged layers of the region’s working class, largely comprised of service industry workers, was not. One of the earliest voices to pierce the dominant racial justice consensus among academics and pundits was Adolph Reed, Jr., and his sharp, courageous analysis on the pages of the Nation and Progressive magazines and in various media interviews would provoke many of the writers included here toward a critical perspective on the disaster grounded in a critique of neoliberalization. We are deeply indebted to his formative and many contributions to our collective understandings of post-Katrina New Orleans, not as some exception to American politics but as ground zero of market-driven experimentation and neoliberal urbanism.
The contributions to this symposium have been republished with minimal editing. The dateline of their initial publication is noted in the title of each. We’ve decided to publish them in this way and with only minor edits because these articles are historical documents, and each reflects particular moments in the city’s transformation and their authors’ attempts to think through that contingency. We encourage you all to take a deeper dive, purchase the books these articles are taken from, and explore many of the historical and documentary film treatments of New Orleans and the Katrina disaster. We believe the perspectives offered here remain critical to our understanding of New Orleans, cities across the globe, and, perhaps most importantly, the dangers of this new historical moment.
We would like to acknowledge the editorial efforts of Raquel Belden and Todd Cronan and all their patience, wherewithal, heavy lifting, and acumen in bringing this double-issue to life. This collection would not be possible without the labors and keen intellect of Todd Cronan, Thomas Jessen Adams, Jamie Peck, Vincanne Adams, Nicole Trujillo-Pagan, John Arena, and Adolph. We would like to thank all our contributors for agreeing to include their works here and ask for forgiveness from our comrades and fellow travelers who have produced equally great, insightful work on the subject that is not included in this collection. We would also like to acknowledge the journals and presses that granted permission to reprint the following selections:
Jamie Peck, “Neoliberal Hurricane: Who Framed New Orleans?,” Socialist Register 43 (2007): 102–29. www.socialistregister.com
Nicole Trujillo-Pagan, “Hazardous Constructions: Mexican Immigrant Masculinity and the Rebuilding of New Orleans,” in The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism and the Remaking of New Orleans, ed. Cedric Johnson (University of Minnesota Press, 2011). www.upress.umn.edu
Vincanne Adams, “Charity, Philanthrocapitalism, and the Affect Economy,” in Markets of Sorrow, Labors of Faith: New Orleans in the Wake of Katrina (Duke University Press, 2013). www.dukuepress.edu
An earlier version of Thomas J. Adams’s article was published as Thomas Jessen Adams, “The Political Economy of Invisibility in Twenty-First-Century New Orleans: Security, Hospitality and the Post-Disaster City,” in Hurricane Katrina in Transatlantic Perspective, ed. Romain Huret and Randy Sparks (Louisiana State University, 2014). www.lsupress.org
John Arena, “Whose City Is It? Hurricane Katrina and the Struggle for New Orleans’s Public Housing, 2003-2008,” in Driven From New Orleans: How Non-Profits Betray Public Housing and Promote Privatization (University of Minnesota Press, 2012). www.upress.umn.edu
Cedric G. Johnson, “What’s Left for New Orleans? The People’s Reconstruction and the Limits of Anarcho-Liberalism,” in Remaking New Orleans: Beyond Exceptionalism and Authenticity, ed. Thomas Jessen Adams and Matt Sakakeeny (Duke University Press, 2019), 261–87. Copyright 2019, Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. www.dukuepress.edu
Megan French-Marcelin is a twentieth-century historian of urban policy and planning. Her work is primarily concerned with the origins of neoliberalism in the marriage of federal urban aid and local economic development. French-Marcelin has written about New Orleans, local politics, and socioeconomic inequality.
French-Marcelin currently serves as the Senior Director of Policy at the Legal Action Center, where she spearheads state-level centered on providing access to healthcare for justice-involved New Yorkers. She holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University in U.S. History, is the author of several scholarly articles, and has written for publications including Jacobin, NY Daily News, Los Angeles Times, and Jadalyyia.