Catastrophe and Rebirth

Abstract

The catastrophe of the twentieth century was so pervasive that it became an organizing principle in the writings of central figures in European philosophy, from Horkheimer to Heidegger to Jaspers. In their writings, they inscribed catastrophe with a new form of thought, one that sought to turn the experience of disaster into a matrix for revolution, or to transform it into a retributive messianic image.

Whether predictive or retrospective, writing about catastrophe in such texts can lead to a kind of aftershock: it can risk rekindling the flames and rewriting them in a different direction. But writing about catastrophe can also provide a way to think about the underlying logic of historical trauma and the relationship between retrospection and rebirth.

To understand this relation, we can look at a simple mathematical catastrophe. A mathematical catastrophe is a point in the model of an input-output system where the smallest additional tilt can produce a large change in the output. A basic example is a system of wells that can be tilted from side to side and that has a ball that is free to roll under gravity in either well.

A symmetrical catastrophe is just beyond the configuration labelled 2. It has a point where the ball is poised to fall from the left but is still balanced on the right, and when the tiniest additional tilt causes a big change in position of the ball (green arrow).

This system is known as the Cusp Catastrophe. It was popularized by the mathematician Christopher Zeeman, who invented and popularized a machine that illustrates this catastrophe.