Chapter 4 - “Bodies Tell Stories”

Summary

Chapter 4 interprets funerals and second lines performed since Hurricane Katrina to articulate an ethics of mourning and hospitality. In the context of post-Katrina New Orleans, these second lines perform memorials for all those who died or were dispossessed during the storm and have been unable to return. They are simultaneously forms of mourning and protest, occupying public space in resistance to government policies of diaspora. Drawing on trauma theory, I argue that Katrina can only be understood from a morally and politically engaged position, and healing can only happen within this context. Furthermore, I build on Jacques Derrida’s work on hospitality to link mourning and repair in post-Katrina New Orleans, illuminating the ways the people of New Orleans articulated an ethics for climate disruption through solidarity and social care. I conclude with a reading of Jesmyn Ward’s novel Salvage the Bones, which depicts the empathy, care, and courage of an African American family in the bayou during the storm.