Farisch’s Disaster and Decentralization

 

Johanna Francis

PWR 1: Containment Rhetoric

Shannon Hervey

October 2, 2017

 

Farisch’s Disaster and Decentralization

 

“The marking of certain groups as un- American suggested not only that they represented a direct internal threat to the national body, but also that they could be geographically contained, placed against and outside of a patriotic ‘heartland geography’.9” (Farish 126).

In his 2003 paper, Disaster and Decentralization: American cities and the Cold War, Matthew Farisch discusses the role that America’s geography and population breakdown played in exacerbating containment rhetoric during the Cold War. The quote above refers back to George Kennan’s Foreign Affairs article “The sources of Soviet conflict”, which is thought to have been the instigator of formal containment rhetoric in America. I found this quote particularly interesting in its reference to America as a body throughout which the “disease” of Communism could potentially spread. The reference to the “heartland” is a very astute rhetorical choice because it implies that should Communism spread to suburban and rural American, it would stop the country’s heart, thus leading to the death of America and its values. Though the “heartland” is a fairly frequently used term, I had never thought of Middle America within the context of America as a whole body, with the country’s “heart” as the most crucial component of  its survival. The discussion of the American heartland connected nicely with Farisch’s assertion that cities felt the most anxiety over the always-looming threat of atomic bomb. The heart is typically associated with emotions in a figurative sense; in reality, it simply pumps blood in order for the body to survive. Within the context of containment rhetoric, it seems as though Farisch is implying that rural and suburban Americans should continue to uphold idealized American values as a unit while their urban counterparts became anxious and disorganized.

From America’s attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki onwards, the immense power of nuclear weapons and their potential for mass destruction, especially within crowded cities, has lingered in American minds. Though 9/11 did not involve nuclear weapons, the idea that someone could attack New York City, a hallmark American metropolis, was incredibly disturbing. Modern media did not help Americans overcome the very understandable anxiety that they were feeling over their country’s newfound vulnerability. 9/11 created a dramatic binary of evil terrorists and heroic and innocent Americans. This narrative quickly became television ratings gold. Americans could not look away from the constant coverage of the attacks, and how could they? 9/11 represented a deep seated fear of metropolitan terrorism that had been lingering since the Cold War and played in with the containment rhetoric that had really been present ever since. Television coverage made it virtually impossible to move on from the awful events of 9/11, priming Americans to feel an even further exacerbated sense of paranoia and become highly receptive to any kind of authority figure.

 

 

 

Blog Post 2: Farish

1. The quote “Every city is a potential battleground, every citizen a target…” captured the fear permeating through American society due to the potential for nuclear warfare.By calling every city a battleground, Farish establish the American sentiment that nobody was truly safe and every city was threatened by the Soviet Union. Throughout his analysis, Farish establishes a case for how Hiroshima and Nagasaki had caused Americans to start fear living in cities: high populations combined with industrial capacity served as a prime spot for nuclear attacks.As such, Americans began “limited dispersion”, as they migrated to suburban communities with 30,000 to 50,000 people. This helped reduce the probability of high impact nuclear attacks that could wipe out millions of people with the drop of one bomb. The suburban community was viewed as a safe haven from cities, which had high levels of immigrants, who were often associated with communism, and high nuclear threat levels.
2. Post-9/11 media was flooded with images of the Twin Towers falling, constantly reminding Americans of the 2,996 civilians who died as a result of being in the city on that day. Facing the constant imagery associated with the tragedy on daily basis, Americans began to become increasingly paranoid about living in cities with high population levels: if New York could be attacked once, it could be attacked again. Media during the time played off these sentiments, as seen when Camus’s noir vision of New York was “a prodigious funeral pyre at midnight”. Farish also explored American’s reactions to envisioning the Hiroshima bombing occurring in the streets of Manhattan. When Americans thought about the same atrocities occurring back home, they had much more emotional reactions.

 

Urban Destruction and Anxiety: Nuclear Age Fear

“Central cities, for many commentators, were spaces of blight, repositories of extreme cultures, classes and races, threatened from above and within. This language of anxious urbanism may well have been symbolic camouflage for broader fears, including the decline of an American culture of victory.”

This quote from the Farish reading showcases an internal fear as opposed to the more obvious enemy of Russia. Cities were vulnerable to attacks, even nuclear in nature, given their higher population densities which would allow for enemies to cause larger devastation with current technology. All the undergoing changes during this period also contributed to the susceptibility of cities to these kinds of attacks. In contrast to the idea within Farish’s reading that cities were danger zones, suburban areas were often considered much more like safe havens relatively.

The power of the images that resulted from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki left a lasting impression on people at that time. Likewise, the destruction of the Twin Towers was seen as a blow dealt at the United States and its fundamental values. Since urban centers kind of form a basis for American life and culture, this urban destruction put the US in a situation that made them appear to potentially be weak. This perceived damaged reputation resulted in the employment of containment-style rhetoric that was used by leaders such as George W. Bush post-9/11 to otherize those who plotted this attack, and to rally the nation together to fight for the cause against terrorists.

Urban Anxiety and the Application of Cultural and Political Strategy in Urban Spaces

In his article, “Disaster and decentralization: American cities and the Cold War,” Matthew Farish discusses how anxiety surrounding the threat of urban disaster emerged Post-World War II in response to the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and resulted in the popularity of suburbanization and the later attempt to change the nature of American cities.

Farish highlights characteristics of the literature and films of the early post-war era to illustrate his point:

Interestingly, the ideal post-nuclear community in many science fiction novels and films was either a small town or another type of contained, purposeful settlement, such as a college or monastery… Not one strategist or government planner, MacCannel points out, ‘has envisaged a post-attack rebuilding by people who never benefitted much from American society, or quite understood what America was all about, that is, by people who lived at a disadvantage on the margins of society.’

The popular depiction of a “contained, purposeful” “post-nuclear community” hints at widespread recognition of the newfound importance of strategy in the context of the built environment. Farish argues that this imposition of careful planning and organization arose out of a pervasive fear of nuclear attack and broader fears about the implications of such an event for the nation.  Farish points to a desire to keep separate the central city and the suburbs, which were viewed as a return to pastoral small-town life, even as concrete plans emerged for the reorganization of American settlements. The choice of “a small town” as a setting for the novel or film narrative supports this idea. In an ideal post-nuclear world, the centralized city is eliminated, and the people remaining–individuals of admirable and traditional American characteristics–can build an ideal society in a non-urban, decentralized setting and survive through the traumatic event.  The “post-nuclear community” of the novels and films of the time leave out a significant portion of the American population: “people who lived at a disadvantage on the margins of society.” This omission is indicative of a prevalent binary categorization between good and bad that Farish recognizes as characteristic of the American rhetoric during the Cold War era. A separation existed in the minds of the American people between the dangerous city and the safe and moral suburb that motivated growing popularity of suburbia. Urban centers were considered more vulnerable to nuclear attack, and urban dwellers were considered more vulnerable to the persuasions of communism.

The anxiety surrounding urban disaster driven by the images of Hiroshima was confirmed, in a way, by the events of 9/11: thousands of Americans died, and the Twin Towers, symbols of American ingenuity and technological prowess, crumbled to the ground. The proliferation of images of those towers falling now haunt the American public in much the same way that images of Hiroshima did Post-WWII, though they have a different effect.  Images of 9/11 are used by politicians, like George W. Bush, to make Americans amenable to the strategic elements of the so-called “war on terrorism” like military action and increased covert surveillance of American citizens.  They serve as a reminder of our vulnerability to outside forces inspiring a variety of responses, such as the increasing popularity of islamophobia and general xenophobia in connection with white nationalism.

The Urban Bullseye: Life in the Nuclear Era

“Despite ‘apocalyptic destruction’ including 40 million deaths, the US wins the stunningly rapid conflict through its overwhelming firepower, and the last illustration depicts American ‘technicians’ testing rubble in front of the still-standing (and deeply symbolic) lions of the New York Public Library.” (cartoon in 19 Nov 1945 issue of Life)

Matthew Farish’s article, Disaster and decentralization: American cities and the Cold War, argues that there were certain “boundaries of risk” established from the early onset of the Cold War surrounding mostly urban areas. In other words, the article explored the obsession Americans in urban areas had with the threat of a nuclear attack. Americans had good reason to, especially after bearing witness to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nowhere in history had the world seen such swift and far-reaching destruction, and now the United States was at the forefront of this new era.

The events of 9/11 had a similar impact, albeit on a lower scale, in that Americans were for the first time introduced to the reality that domestic soil could also bear witness to large-scale destruction. Though nuclear weapons were not utilized, the attacks still managed to evoke shock at just how strategically and how deeply the perpetrators were able to get into the country before carrying out their plan. In the coming days, the constant replays of the events and the aftermath reminded Americans of just how vulnerable dense urban areas could be to a future, and possibly worse, attack. And in a country where Americans willingly gave away their rights to privacy in the name of patriotism, it is not too far-fetched to assume that Americans would be more than a little “anxious” about another attack in the nuclear age, as Farish put it.

Containment of Ideology through Containment of Space

“…the assertion that residents of ‘small and medium-sized communities lead a much more natural and normal life than those in large cities’…Not one strategist or government planner, MacCannell points out, ‘has envisaged a post-attack rebuilding by people who never much benefited from American society, or quite understood what America was all about, that is, by people who lived at a disadvantage on the margins of society’.”

 

In Matthew Farish’s “Disaster and decentralization: American cities and the Cold War”, he discusses how risk of threat (external or internal) could be limited through geographical boundaries. Understanding the context (kairos) of this time necessitates understanding that the “natural” and “normal” life of the suburbs was only accessible to middle class white people. Race and the othering of groups is a subtext underlying Farish’s entire piece, which is made known at the end when he states that this is a history of people “left behind by the combination of geopolitics and science during the early Cold War.” The intentional vilification of cities stemmed from the disorder and chaos it entailed. In cities, intersections between different races and classes were had more frequently and countercultures were created. Space and dispersal, then, would limit the interactions between these groups and enable a more regimented racial and class hierarchy. Therefore, suburbs could only be accessed by certain groups. An atomic bomb posed a double threat to the United States in its disruption of the international power dynamic as well as its disruption of entrenched hierarchies. Therefore, the glorification of suburban living would lessen this damage by ensuring that a homogeneous group of people existed after the war. Since deterioration of hierarchies was bound to follow an atomic bomb, government officials sought to limit the disorder by controlling which people felt the effects of the bomb the most, thereby limiting the disruption of a hierarchy. At its most extreme, the second half of the quotation above implies a sort of ethnic cleansing in which the groups expected to be decimated by the atomic bomb would be the groups living “on the margins of society.” In the same way that the Eugenics Movement was naturalized with Social Darwinism, people worked to normalize suburban living during the Cold War era and thereby normalize the lives led by white, middle class people. The suggested sterilization of the society relates to an idea that marginalized groups were dangerous some way and in need of cleansing and order. Overall, Farish’s objective was to form a link between external and internal issues, as well as ideological containment and spatial containment. In creating this link, Farish reaffirms that underlying all the actions made by United States authority is a fear of chaos that could destabilize the intentionally constructed world it has made.

 

The incessant imagery of the Twin Towers “falling on the imagination of a post 9/11 United States” serves to place American citizens in a state of perpetual fear. Just as domination requires a constant invocation of war, this imagery serves to place citizens in a perpetual state of defensiveness. A constant fear of disorder requires a constant maintenance of order, which ensures the desire for stability in place of chaos.

The View of Urban Life in the Atomic Age

“Not one strategist or government planner, MacCannell points out, ‘has
envisaged a post-attack rebuilding by people who never much benefited from American
society, or quite understood what America was all about, that is, by people who lived at a disadvantage on the margins of society.”

Farish’s article details how the view of urban centers changed during the Cold War, essentially arguing that they became centers of nuclear danger. The majority of Farish’s essay, however, discusses how different groups planned to fix this problem. Ideas of “decentralization” and “S” shaped cities were discussed, but the quote above demonstrates the issue that Farish brings up: middle class Americans only cared about urban centers once they became targets of the Cold War. Once cities became clear centers of attack, people who lived in the suburbs around those cities became fearful of attack. This is what led to discussion about “decentralizing” American cities, not a genuine concern for the people who lived in those cities.

In the 21st century, the fear of terrorism replaces the fear of nuclear attack and the image of 9/11 replaces that of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Much like in the mid-20th century, people today fear that high-density areas are more likely to be victim to a terrorist attack. The memory of 9/11 serves as a powerful reminder of this, especially since it happened on American soil. Government officials could now exploit this fear, promoting any law or act as a precaution to make sure such an event cannot occur again. George Bush Jr. did exactly this when justifying U.S. entry into Iraq, stating that troops were there to ensure that such an event did not happen in the future. Since most Americans were indeed afraid that the events of 9/11 would occur in their own city or town, this rhetoric became extremely effective.

Blog Post 2: Urban Centers as Targets

“As the Cold War deepened,many scientists and political commentators began to suggest that American urban populations were excessive: atomic disasters would simply affect too many people, and too many industrial sites.”

Farish’s examination of how urban centers became places of fear, darkness, and decay in the post war era is best understood as a triumph of the suburb over the urban. As the fear of crime, racial minorities, and soviet nuclear attacks grew, so did the urge to decentralize and disperse. As the above quote describes, large cities were no longer an American asset, instead a liability. Cities were no longer shining examples of the american way. Instead, they were nuke magnets, high value targets that contained a large percent of our industry and population, especially compared to our communist rivals. However, the impracticality of completely removing them from the map led to both the introduction of compartmentalization of industrial centers away from the residential, and the mass exodus to the suburbs coupled with the creation of a commuter culture.

Looking to the modern day, the fear of terrorist attacks on urban centers has had much less of an effect on Urban centers than the fear of nuclear holocaust. Instead of avoiding the city, now many people are moving back in, gentrifying areas and forcing many lower-income families out. One reason why this may be occurring is that while nuclear war is seen as unavoidable and uncontrollable, crime and terrorism is though of as preventable. Instead of fleeing from the threat of terror, the solution in the post 9/11 era is to fight it, at whatever cost. Militarization of our police departments is the new shift to the suburbs, making cities safe by force. From automatic weapons to mobile guard towers, the idea is safety over liberty. Policies like Stop and Frisk in New York City exemplify this concept, and show how safety policies can often utilize fear to persecute marginalized groups in our society.

Deference and Deceit – Doubled

In Matthew Farish’s “Disaster and Decentralization: American Cities and the Cold War,” he writes,

“[J]ournalists, science fiction authors, religious leaders and concerned scientists all rapidly ‘transmuted the devastation of Hiroshima into visions of American cities in smoldering ruins’” (131).

The major reformation of American urban landscapes was precipitated by a variety of causes, not least of which was the shocking devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, at the hands of the United States. This sight formed the basis of a great deal of science fiction and was in the mind of Americans for long years after 1945. Academic leaders and scientists provided the intellectual defense for this hysteria, advocating dispersion of city-dwellers. In addition, it must not be ignored, according to Farish, that cities were also “spaces of blight” and “repositories of extreme cultures, classes, and races.” Suburbia was the answer to this growing fright; it served the twin ambitions of a bothered white urban community, for they could at once leave behind and ignore their ethnically distinct urban neighbors as well as live in (perceived) relative safety.

Today, the images of the Twin Towers take up a role in the American psyche similar to those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after World War II. Like the reaction of Americans then, consisting of deferent acceptance of the (often outlandish) assertions of scientists and societal leaders, there was a rally to the flag. Fear of nuclear disaster paralleled fear of terrorism, and fear of Russians gave way to fear of Muslims. Illusions of safety from harm were conjured up by government leaders seeking to ease the concerns of the American populace. More importantly, these fears were often fanned by the same leaders so as to propel controversial legislation that abridged legal rights of Americans.

Producing, Rationalizing, and Containing: Addressing Nuclear Fear During the Cold War

In Matthew Farish’s article Disaster and Decentralization: American Cities and the Cold War, the role of American cities in the geopolitical tensions of the Cold War is highlighted. In particular, Farish discusses post-Hiroshima and Nagasaki anxieties about America’s own urban centers succumbing to the atomic bomb.

During the Cold War era, nuclear fear was both dramatized and contained. Farish delineates this seemingly contradictory point when he explains that “using a curious mixture of graphic and sanitized language, magazines and the experts they consulted produced nuclear fear while simultaneously rationalizing and containing it – a strategy that was central to Cold War civil defense efforts” (133). The comparison between “graphic” and “sanitized” as well as “producing” and “rationalizing” encompasses the multidimensional way in which the nuclear fear was addressed. Government officials published and widely advertised scientific findings on the current nuclear dangers, particularly of living in an urban setting, by stating that because cities are highly concentrated, they are most likely epicenters of potential nuclear targets. This, along with the view of cities as “spaces of blight [and] repositories of extreme cultures, classes, and races” (141) led to rapid dispersal, as many Americans (particularly white Americans) sought out the suburbs as their new homes. However, there was also an attempt to rationalize this in several ways. The most intriguing explanation was that American cities are “defense weapons,” in that they can absorb the hit so that the effects of it don’t infiltrate the surrounding areas. Nuclear fear was therefore contained into the urban settings, and those outside of it could enjoy a feeling of safety and security.

One of the ways in which government officials “produced” nuclear fear is through images of Hiroshima, and evocations of potential scenarios in which the events of Hiroshima could occur in the United States. We see a similar use of imagery post 9-11 with that of the Twin Towers falling. This is an extremely powerful imagery that Bush first introduced to justify his War on Terror and the passing of the USA PATRIOT ACT. The recurrent imagery of an attack on America’s own soil serves as a constant reminder of why America is still and should still be fighting the War on Terror. It also creates a sense of fear, which prompts the American people to look towards the government to help provide a sense of safety and security.