#IntegrateAmherst: Updating to Remain the Same

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun’s book, Updating to Remain the Same. Chun observes that crisis interrupts habit, and, in response, social actors and innovators respond to crisis by reinventing the old habit as fresh and updated, but more or less, the same. Chun quotes Milton Freidman “‘‘only a crisis— actual or perceived— produces real change.’” However, Chun argues “Crises become ordinary…thwart change and make the present, as Lauren Berlant has put it, an impasse, an affectively intense cul-de-sac.” The