Hacking the System:The Immanance of a Lifein Post-Katrina Louisiana

orRace, Poverty, Health, &

Education Dynamics Exposed

M. Jayne FleenerLouisiana State University

A Response toJacques Daignault

“Hacking the Future”

Technology

• Cultural Industry (Adorno?)– Stealing our capacity to imagine– Relation to consumer society

• Symbolic Divide and 3rd Memory (Steigler)

Postman’s Technopoly

Metaphor of Plato’s Phaedrus

“For people such as ourselves, who are inclined …to be tools of our tools.”

Thamus, the king of a great city in Upper Egypt, discussing writing with the god Theuth who invented writing, number, calculation, geometry and astonomy …

Technology of Writing• Theuth - Writing is the recipe for memory and

wisdom.

Thamus• Discoverer not the best judge of the good or harm• Those who exercise the technology will cease to

exercise memory – the technology is a receipt for recollection, not for memory

• As for memory – quantity of information and appearance of wisdom lead to conceit and those who think they have wisdom become a burden to society

Technology is a branch of moral philosophy,

not of science.

Paul Goodman as quoted in:Neil Postman’s

Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology

No neutral technologies –

Knowledge monopolies create a kind of conspiracy against those who have no access to the specialized knowledge.

(Harold Innis – Communication Studies)

In a discipline society,to be free is to get out;

In a control societyto be free is to get in

Jacques Daignault

Para-phrasing Steigler

Hacking …

DisobedienceDisrupting

Creating

Possibility keepers

Engaging in the conversation

Challenging

Authority

Context:South Louisiana

Louisiana Context: Before Katrina

– Highest in the nation in percent of adults incarcerated…

– 3rd Highest in the nation in percent of juveniles incarcerated…

– Highest in the nation in per capita murders…– Highest percentage of families with children

headed by a single-parent– Highest percentage of senior citizens with

income less than 50% of the poverty level…Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, March 1999, 2000,

and 2001.

• Highest percentage of kids without health insurance…

• Highest state in the nation in percent of children living in poverty…

• Second highest % of children in families where the parents have NO full-time employment the entire year… (34 % average over a three year period)

• Second Highest percent of low birth-weight babies in the nation. (10.3%)

• Overall ranking for positive children’s issues…second lowest in the nation…

• Of the 50 States and the District of Columbia, Louisiana leads the nation in having the highest percent of people 65 Years and over below 150 percent of the poverty level, with 37.1%.

– Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current

Population Survey, March 1999, 2000, and 2001.

ETUDE

Emergence

Energy

Life

Far From Equilibrium Dynamics

• The loss of life and property damage was worsened by breaks in the levees that separate New Orleans from surrounding lakes. At least 80% of New Orleans was under flood water on August 31st, largely as a result of levee failures from Lake Pontchartrain. The combination of strong winds, heavy rainfall and storm surge led to breaks in the earthen levee after the storm passed, leaving some parts of New Orleans under 20 feet of water.

• A major economic impact for the nation was the disruption to the oil industry from Katrina. Preliminary estimates from the Mineral Management Service suggest that oil production in the Gulf of Mexico was reduced by 1.4 million barrels per day (or 95 % of the daily Gulf of Mexico production) as a result of the hurricane.

LA Students & Teachers

• 186,565 public school students displaced

• 61,000 private school students displaced

• Eight parishes had major damage

• 7,865 teachers in effected public schools

• 1,700 certified staff

• 7,022 support workers

A life is everywhere,in all the moments that a given living subject goes through …

an immanent life carrying with itthe events or singularitiesthat are merely actualized

in subjects and objects

This indefinite life does not itself have moments …

but only in-between times,between-moments …

The singularitiesand the events that

constitute a lifecoexist with the

accidents of the life that corresponds to it …

One is always theindex of a multiplicity:

an event,a singularity,

a life …

What we call virtualis not something that lacks reality

but something that isengaged in a process

of actualization following the plane

that gives it its particular reality …

The immanent event is actualized in a state of things

and of the livedthat make it happen

Gilles DeleuzePure Immanence: Essays on A Life

Excerpts from pp. 28-31

What are our between-moments?Our indices of multiplicities?

Our virtualities?

How do we maintain hope?Create hope?

Protect against turbulance?Engage turbulance?Synergize change?

If you think about it,you will see that it is true.