Post-Disaster Futures

An interdisciplinary exploration of how Puerto Ricans are redefining futurity in defiance of imperial violence and infrastructural collapse

In the wake of hurricanes, earthquakes, and fiscal collapse, Puerto Ricans have confronted the limits of state-led reconstruction and the rise of disaster capitalism. At the same time, they have forged new community-based experiments in self-governance, collective care, and imaginative practice.

Post-Disaster Futures brings together scholars, artists, and activists. Moving between the archipelago and its diaspora, the volume traces a collective effort to rethink what repair means when the very institutions of recovery and governance perpetuate the damage they claim to fix. Through essays, interviews, poetry, and conversations, the contributors explore themes ranging from energy justice and housing displacement to memory, migration, and artistic practice. Collectively, they show how the ruins of colonial modernity can be sources of solidarity and imagination.

Contributors include Elizabeth Aranda, Alvin Padilla–Babilonia, Raúl Santiago Bartolomei, Yarimar Bonilla, Mikey Cordero, Rafael V. Capó García, Mercedes Trelles Hernández, Mónica A. Jiménez, Natalia Lassalle–Morillo, Marcelo López–Dinardi, Bettina Pérez Martínez, Edgardo Miranda–Rodríguez, Sarah Molinari, Ed Morales, Juan Carlos Rodríguez Rivera, Erika P. Rodríguez, Michael Rodríguez–Muñiz, Isabel Guzzardo Tamargo, Ana Teresa Toro, Fernando Tormos–Aponte, and Érika Fontánez Torres.