Guest Lecture.

Sublime aftershocks: Sociological reason in the aftermath of an
earthquake in Gujarat, western India
by Edward Simpson, SOAS
Organised by CISCA/Aarhus University
Trøjborg
12th November 2010, 10-12 PM in building 2117, room 312

An earthquake is a distinct kind of catastrophe, which history, comparative literature
and the ethnography from Gujarat suggests demands particular kinds of explanation.
Such explanations are typically organised around the theme of sin, as well as other provocations of the divine order of the gods. Unlike situations of mass violence, the
blame for disaster is not projected outwards onto ‘others’ but inwards on one’s ‘self’.
To blame others would be to grant power and legitimacy to their gods. In this lecture,
I examine the structures of the blame narratives found in Gujarat. I conclude: there
are significant similarities in the ways people of different religions cast blame and
attribute agency in the region. Secondly, those affected by the disaster use social
memory as a form of collective reason to explain the catastrophe; as they do so,
they render the extraordinary ordinary. Finally, the cleavages and ruptures
evident in such explanations strongly resemble those that make society itself and, therefore, explanations can in fact be seen as attempts at understanding the
experience of living through a disaster.

Edward Simpson has a doctorate from the London School of Economics and is currently a senior lecturer in social anthropology in the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. He has published widely on the society and history of Gujarat in western India, most recently the co-edited collection (2010) The Idea of Gujarat: History, Ethnography and Text. Since 2001, he has been engaged with a research project looking at the long-term effects of catastrophic natural disaster (in this case an earthquake) on society in Gujarat. This research focuses, in particular, on the concentration and consequences of extreme emotions associated with catastrophic disaster, notably, terror, sublimity, nostalgia and avarice, as well as ideas about death, memory and divine retribution.

For questions regarding this event please contact CISCA at cisca@hum.au.dk

 

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