Patient Publics

As the attention of spectacular publics wanes, disaster-affected communities begin to feel a sense of abandonment. This causes injuries to their esteem and poses limits on the scope of political action. This chapter narrates how ‘patient publics’ are constructed through the micro-politics of waiting. It argues that patient publics create a vocabulary for both acquiescence and negotiation to a political order that reproduces their subordination. Despite these limitations, however, the chapter argues that deliberative democratic theory can learn from how political claims are made amidst despair. It draws attention to modest achievements of communities that struggle but nevertheless strive to make an appearance in the public sphere.

Populist Publics

In May 2016, the Philippines elected a self-confessed mass murderer as president of one of Asia’s oldest democracies. There are many interpretations for Rodrigo Duterte’s rise to power. This chapter offers a distinct perspective from disaster-affected communities who actively campaigned for Duterte. It argues that the emergence of ‘populist publics’ cannot be reduced to a simple case of a demagogue manipulating the sentiments of desperate citizens. Instead, the chapter argues that the relationship between Duterte and disaster survivors is negotiated and contingent, conditional and not fanatical, morally complex and not based on hasty judgment. The chapter argues that populists must also be understood not only in terms of what they say but also how they engage in affective forms of attunement, which allows them to effectively respond to hidden injuries of communities of misery.

Contestatory Publics

Contestatory publics refer to the arena of confrontational claim-making which demands responsiveness and accountability to decision-makers. They are confrontational as far as they aggressively lay blame on parties they consider to be the cause of their suffering. Beyond critique, they also offer alternative visions for reconstruction by drawing on their experiences as communities who suffered from the disaster. The repertoire used in their contestations are visceral. In protests, public displays of grief, and emotional speeches, the weight of claims are established through performances of mourning and indignation. For contestatory publics, misery has a productive political power. This chapter focuses on the case of People Surge, a network of peasants, fisherfolk, urban poor communities, students, and members of religious organizations which led protest action in exceptionally challenging circumstances.

Introduction

The Introduction places the book in conversation with the scholarly literature that views post-disaster politics using the lens of democratization. It interrogates the ethical and political value of democracy in the most trying of times and reimagines how democracy can be experienced in the context of widespread suffering. It makes a case for contextualizing normative assumptions about inclusiveness, voice, and accountability in relation to the material, social, and affective consequences of communities surviving a spectacular tragedy. These theoretical arguments are contextualized using the case of the Philippines in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan—one of the strongest storms that made landfall in recent history—which resulted to over 6000 deaths and widespread displacement. It concludes by providing a summary of the book’s theoretical and empirical chapters.

Like a Kite in a Hurricane

This final chapter focuses on two lessons for deliberative democracy based on disaster ethnography. It begins by making a case for celebrating everyday achievements of democratic action. The micro-politics of deliberative democracy works through humble methods of everyday practice with everyday effects. While this must not be interpreted as a replacement for large scale political reform, it also suggests an appreciation for the quotidian features of political action that builds the edifice of democratic life. The chapter concludes with a re-evaluation of the role of emotions in public deliberation. It argues that emotions play an ambivalent role as far as they can draw attention to the suffering of distant others, but it also risks creating hierarchies of misery. This chapter is entitled Like a Kite in a Hurricane—a metaphor for democracy in a time of misery.

Collaborative Publics

Collaborative publics view misery as a disposition that needs to be overcome by hope. They are collaborative as far as they view post-disaster rehabilitation as a ‘deliberative project’—one that is made coherent by a shared storyline of collaboration rather than that of contestation, linked together by democratic professionals, and sustained by processes of community-level deliberations. The chapter draws on the case study of a ‘model community’ which effectively mobilized displaced communities to become political actors who take charge of their own recovery. The chapter concludes by distinguishing collaborative from contestatory publics and examining collaborative publics’ contributions in post-disaster politics.

Surrogate Publics

What can global spectators do to give voice and visibility to the suffering of distant others? Chapter 4 introduces the concept of ‘surrogate publics’ to describe the ways in which witnesses to tragedies act as representatives to communities of misery by making claims about their recovery. The case of Haiyan demonstrates how surrogate representatives like celebrity humanitarians, public figures, and ordinary citizens assert the presence of disaster survivors by offering the voice of care and the voice of justice. While the voice of care was successful in sustaining global attention to the spectacle, the voice of justice sustains the political conversation beyond the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. The chapter concludes by examining the legacy of surrogate publics to deliberative politics.

Spectacular Publics

Spectacles have an ambivalent role in democratic life. They can reinforce or break inequalities in voice and visibility. They can inspire or stifle reflections on the political causes of widespread misery. This chapter examines the production, mediation, and reception of the spectacle of Typhoon Haiyan. It argues that dramatic portrayals of the typhoon constructed ‘spectacular publics’ that bestowed attention to the suffering of distant others. While there are valid reasons to criticize spectacular representations of tragedy as ‘disaster pornography’ meant to respond to the demands of audiences with fleeting attention spans, this chapter demonstrates the potential of spectacles in democratizing discourses. Spectacular publics can grow moral communities and transform audiences into publics, which in turn set in motion a series of public deliberations.

Responding to the Unspeakable

This chapter makes a case for a multimodal account of discursive participation. In the context of tragedies where collective suffering is unspeakable, deliberative democratic theory should be sensitive to political claim-making that go beyond linguistic forms of expression. The chapter puts forward some examples of claim-making that go beyond voice, as well as practices of responsiveness that act on these political claims. To recognize that there are many forms of claim-making, however, is not enough. For deliberative democratic theory to maintain its critical bite, pluralizing norms of discursive participation must remain anchored on clear ethical commitments. The chapter draws on normative media theory’s concept of agonistic solidarity as a guidepost to assess democratic practice amidst spectacular tragedies.