The Eye of the Storm: Katrina, New Orleans and Power

The beast. The system. The man with no eyes. The coup d’état. The prison. The sexual confession. Throughout this project, all these names appear in a relationship with power. Whatever the label, power can be understood to be immanent in relationships already present. It is continually decentralized, mobile and transitive, thereby eliminating any presuppositions of control and unity. Like the hydra it regenerates, reshapes and does not operate from one central source but from many centers. This paper shows power in three areas: sexuality, a personal arena; prisons, a communal arena; and politics, a global arena. These three locations of power show the type of influence over the person that is possible. Even still, the framework often placed around power does not always allow for this multiplicity; often, power is seen as control wielded by one actor. That framework may be dissolved by one final allegory, that of Hurricane Katrina and the City of New Orleans.

At first glance, the power that devastated the Gulf Coast maybe constrained to a hurricane, or a large storm. But deconstruction unearths a larger and far more complex system of relationships that lead to tragedy. Power cannot be localized within the storm but must be seen as intrinsic in the relationships exterior to the storm but that influenced the outcome. To begin with, a storm itself is far from being singular. Instead of presenting itself as a unified force, a storm is a system of wind, water, gravity and atmosphere that is constantly changing, constantly in motion and continually decentralized. A storm is never the same from one moment to the next, therefore one could not locate its center or the source of its strength. It simply is, and its being is never the same. Like Foucault’s power it lacks any unity. In the case of Hurricane Katrina, the storm also exhibited power by exposing relationships and weaknesses already present in the fabric of the city. The storm was not the source of the resident’s poverty. It was not the source of the disorganized response. It did not directly cause looting or lawlessness. It did not neglect the levees. Power was already immanent in those factors; it simply took the storm to awaken the public to these realities. In this way the storm, though powerful, was not the sole actor that brought disaster. It was instead a catalyst that illuminated the functioning of power already present in New Orleans. To refer to the disaster simply as “Hurricane Katrina” neglects the truer sources of catastrophe: power already intrinsic in the setting.

The visual image of the storm offers a metaphor for power.



Though it clearly shows motion and change, the image also reveals a curious center: the eye of the storm. No wind or rain punishes within the eye; instead there is a reprieve from the effects of the system. But this reprieve is temporary. The eye of the storm, that appears as the center of the storm’s great power, remains a false shelter. Those seeking shelter within its center reside in a false reality where power and control are relegated to one place. Like the storm as a whole shows, power comes from many. The illusion of peace offered by the eye at its center soon succumbs to the multiplicity of power sources immanent within the storm and wherever it travels. These relationships, not the storm itself, present power. In the final analysis power must not be seen as control, as force, as strength and least likely, as one. Instead it demands recognition as immanent, motive, and many: the new hydra.