Nicholas,
"Chaos does not envelop us during tragedy, rather chaos saves us from the
banal machinations of our undead lives."....Nicholas Ruiz III 10/20/05
Interesting piece this one...and I particularly enjoyed grappling with the
above thought.
Alex
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2005 6:57
AM
Subject: The Immersion of New
Orleans
The Immersion of New Orleans
Nicholas Ruiz
III
Sometimes a city must be sacrificed, so that people can
exhale. The omnilateral
spreading of our species can only be
furthered as hope floats away from the city
of New Orleans. Like the recent
New Orleans displacee said in the television
news, "Now I can leave this
town! I've never had such an
opportunity!"--that and on his way to Houston
to get some pants. Courage or
recklessness? Perhaps the only
difference is in winning and losing. If those
on the inside can see
us, those of us on the outside of New Orleans, on the
outside of the
world?s latest sacrificial offering, can attempt to see past
the context of
media obliteration, past the screening of the immersion of
New
Orleans.
Of course, every
smile of the media clown has its sinister lining, and
for us
non-participants, a sign of the real hidden joy borne by the hosts of
the
new victims manifests itself in baleful anticipation, as the gun sales
rise
in the cities that receive our American refugees, an ironic greeting
for the
displacees of New Orleans. In the midst of the mediated
screen of Texan
empathy lies the factual fear of absorption. Not to
be outdone, back in the
disaster zone, the Gulf coast reveals its own
ironies; casinos (Mississippi
claims 10% of its state budget reflects
casino taxation) highlighting the
simulation of southern values in the
Bible belt. Especially the holiest of His
states fill their state
coffers with the excesses of extracurricular Sunday
evening slot machines
and paper-bagged beer. Another reminder of the
supplementary
speculation we call the just
economy.
Too much goodness in
our hearts, minds and screens--but little to be
found on the freshly looted
streets filling with the muscle and hate of that
ultra-postmodern
Venice. Unlike Venice, which took years to flood, New Orleans
was
flooded in a few hours. The city of New Orleans itself is a
speculation
gone bad, wedged as it was between two gargantuan sources of
water, below sea
level, damned and leveed for the always spreading
masses. Speculations hold
that development contracts will explode all
over the city map, as the bidding
wars begin and a "new" New Orleans is
sure to rise as quickly as they can
pump the water out of the old
one. I liked New Orleans, for what it's
worth.
How to imbibe this
event? What is its meaning? What is our new
ontological location, now
that that another "world-changing" cataclysmic event
has occurred. A
chance for the do-gooders to do good; the finger-pointers to
point fingers;
Bush isn't responsible for the severity of our complacency, and
the
aristocrats merely capitalize upon it?despite the editorial pieces
and
listserv diatribes of the free-thinkers; a chance for the speculators
to place
new bets, build bigger casinos, build them inland and get it right
this time,
so the Good News poker hands will never have to fold? I
say forget about New
Orleans and build a new city, in a new American place,
maybe in Iraq, where at
least the imbecility is out in the open and not
hidden in the barrio waiting
for a hurricane to uncover it. Now that would
be honest. Infinite casinos in
the desert?we specialize in that,
no?
We began and
continue our new millennium with the entire prowess of
flies, taking off
and landing, repeatedly wherever we can, leaving our urine
and feces
behind. The dissolution of New Orleans reminds us of our shit,
we
still refuse to take care
of.
Cash for
the victims is a sign of the metaphysics of Capital, where
suffering is
always bought and paid for. New Orleans signifies the lightness
of
our new locations, new Capital, new identities, all tokens that we
are,
unbeknownst to ourselves, still alive and reprogrammable--all we can
hope for
is a hurricane to remind us. Perhaps then, we can start
again. In the eye of
the ruin lies our hope and our souvenir of where
we have been and where we are
going. But the survivors of the storm will
instead be turned into the
sacrificial bread to be broken at the mediated
dinner table of the world,
reminding us all of how "good" we've got
it.
If the ambiguity of New
Orleans as an event leaves us feeling a little
light, a bit nauseated;
there is always the laceration of Capital to wake us
from our sympathetic
malaise. Positions have already been taken--go long the
builders,
developers, clean-up outfits and architectural face-lifters and short
the
casinos, retail setups and insurance companies with heavy exposure in
the
Gulf. Just another day on the trading floor of our lives. What
New Orleans
offers us is a bit of exposure?another crack in the surface of
the screen; 9/11
made a similar offering. New Orleans shows us that
humanity prefers its
empathetic compassion to be best delivered from the
barrel of a gun?or at
least, best dispensed when the police are on
duty. Chaos does not envelop us
during tragedy, rather chaos saves us
from the banal machinations of our
undead
lives.
For those of us that are
eternally watching the events unfold, the screens
of New Orleans show us
all that nothing can save us from ourselves--like so
many
of the police
that never showed when called for duty during those irregular
days of our
latest pandemonium. One might be tempted to say that the great
white
American underbelly lies exposed and fully parched in the full heat of
the
still-burning spotlights of that late, great city of New
Orleans.
--
Nicholas Ruiz III
GTA/doctoral
candidate
Interdisciplinary Program in the Humanities
Florida State
University
Editor, Kritikos
http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~nr03/
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