Generation Bubble

Imagined Communities: Rebecca Solnit’s Disaster Paradises

The order in need of reestablishing after disasters, it goes without saying, is the elites’ order, one replete with manifold modes of domination. But in the interim, before such order is reestablished, workaday folks glimpse the power that resides in them alone, one which the dominant culture typically short-circuits with its constant exhortations to earn and spend. It’s as if principles of anarchism — not theoretical anarchism, but a practical, functioning sort — are inscribed in the human genome. Indeed, if there’s anything to regret about disasters, its that the remarkable communities (Solnit goes so far as to call them “utopian”) which spring up during them are all too quickly folded back into the status quo. Yet, short-lived as these communities are, they endure long enough to make me believe that there’s something behind the stenciled graffiti I so often see emblazoned on walls, park benches and sidewalks: Another world is possible.