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A Genealogy of Refusal : Walking away from crisis and scarcity narratives

Crisis Narratives frame our response

Crisis Narratives frame our responses to disaster, scarcity and refusal. This genealogy of refusal explores such stories. Our aim is to re-frame crisis narratives in librarianship so librarians and others so often called upon by role to compensate for scarcity have other ways of contending with need.

Half the seats on many of the Titanic’s lifeboats were empty. The tragedy of the sinking of the Titanic is an event retold over and over because "it didn't have to be that way". It's become a cautionary tale about hubris, human nature, and constructed scarcity.

"This is the thought experiment of a thousand sci-fi stories: When the chips are down, will your neighbors be your enemies or your saviors? When the ship sinks, should you take the lifeboat and row and row and row, because if you stop to fill the empty seats, someone’s gonna put a gun to your head, throw you in the sea, and give your seat to their pals?" (Doctorow, C. “The Dangers of Cynical Sci-Fi Disaster Stories.” Slate Magazine. October 13, 2020.)

Yet, "Stories of futures in which disaster strikes and we rise to the occasion are a vaccine against the virus of mistrust. Our disaster recovery is always fastest and smoothest when we work together, when every seat on every lifeboat is taken. " (Doctorow, C. “Disasters Don’t Have to End in Dystopias.” Wired, April 5, 2017. https://www.wired.com/2017/04/cory-doctorow-walkaway/.)

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Disasters Don’t Have to End in Dystopias: The difference between utopia and dystopia isn't how well everything runs. It's about what happens when everything fails.