Rhetoric and Public Memory in the Science of Disaster

Book excerpt: Rhetoric and Public Memory in the Science of Disaster grapples with the role of science in the public memory of natural disasters. Taking a psychoanalytic and genealogical approach to the rhetoric of disaster science throughout the twentieth century, this book explores how we remember natural disasters by analyzing how we try to prevent them. Chapters track the development of predictive modeling methods alongside some of the worst and most consequential natural disasters in the history of the United States. From miniaturized physical scale models, to cartographic renderings within a burgeoning statistical science, to ever more complex simulation scenarios, disaster science has long created imaginary versions of horrific events in the effort to prevent them. Through an exploration of these hypothetical disasters, this book theorizes how science itself becomes a site of public memory, an increasingly important question in a world of changing weather.