[Reader-list] The Immersion of New Orleans

[Nicholas Ruiz]

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 wrinkle,
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/

----------------------------------------------------------------