This book is about the ways in which disaster-affected communities perform their misery to secure political gains. It argues that democratic politics can take root in contexts of widespread depravity and dispossession and is a testament to both the resilience and fragility of the democratic project when faced with existential threats.

• Timeline of key events


• 1: Introduction


• 2: Responding to the Unspeakable


• 3: Spectacular Publics


• 4: Surrogate Publics


• 5: Contestatory Publics


• 6: Collaborative Publics


• 7: Populist Publics


• 8: Patient Publics


• 9: Like a Kite in a Hurricane


• Appendix


• Notes


• Bibliography


• Index

Nicole Curato is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy & Global Governance at the University of Canberra. She is the author of the book Power in Deliberative Democracy: Norms, Forums, Systems (2019, Palgrave with Marit Hammond and John Min) and editor of the book Duterte Reader: Critical Essays in Rodrigo Duterte's Early Presidency (2017, Cornell University Press). In 2015, she received the Australian Research Council's Discovery Early Career Research Award for her work on democratic innovations in post-disaster contexts. She is a regular contributor in CNN Philippines, Al Jazeera, ABC News Australia, and has written for the New York Times, Current History, and The Conversation, among others.