"The Rack Dislimns"

Professing in the Aftermath of Katrina

Authors

Richelle Munkhoff University of Colorado Boulder

Abstract

This essay focuses on the psychological impact of Katrina's long aftermath and attempts to represent the difficulties of restoring order in one's personal and professional lives after a disaster of such magnitude. Because Richelle Munkhoff and her husband lived and worked in two distinct parts of the devastated area, New Orleans and Hattiesburg, Mississippi, the essay addresses the conflicting experiences of recovery in both places by drawing on Antony and Cleopatra, and particularly upon the incommensurability of Antony's Egypt and Rome. Narrating trauma, the essay suggests, can be neither linear nor complete; too great a breakdown in language and communication occurs. Ultimately, again drawing upon Antony, the essay shows how "the rack" is powerfully connected to the mutability of epistemology — how what we think we know and see can be radically altered by the natural force of clouds.

Author Biography

Richelle Munkhoff, University of Colorado Boulder

Richelle Munkhoff, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder, is completing a book manuscript entitled Searchers of the Dead: Women Reading the Corpse, c. 1550-1850, which examines the role of older poor women in determining cause of death and keeping vital statistics across the long early modern period. In 2005, she was an Assistant Professor at Tulane University. She has articles on plague, the searchers, and the bills of mortality.