We Are All Survivors

Description

What is the role of folklore in the discussion of catastrophe and trauma? How do disaster survivors use language, ritual, and the material world to articulate their experiences? What insights and tools can the field of folkloristics offer survivors for navigating and narrating disaster and its aftermath? Can folklorists contribute to broader understandings of empathy and the roles of listening in ethnographic work?

We Are All Survivors is a collection of essays exploring the role of folklore in the wake of disaster. Contributors include scholars from the United States and Japan who have long worked with disaster-stricken communities or are disaster survivors themselves; individual chapters address Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Maria, and two earthquakes in Japan, including the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster of 2011. Adapted from a 2017 special issue of Fabula (from the International Society for Folk Narrative Research), the book includes a revised introduction, an additional chapter with original illustrations, and a new conclusion considering how folklorists are documenting the COVID-19 pandemic.

We Are All Survivors bears witness to survivors' expressions of remembrance, grieving, and healing.

Preface
1. Introduction: We Are All Survivors, by Carl Lindahl
2. Into the Bullring: The Significance of "Empathy" after the Earthquake, by Yutaka Suga
3. Rebuilding and Reconnecting After Disaster: Listening to Older Adults, by Yoko Taniguchi
4. The Story of Cultural Assets and their Rescue: A First-Hand Report from Tohoku, by Kōji Katō
5. Critical Empathy: A Survivor's Study of Disaster, by Kate Parker Horigan
6. Empathy and Speaking Out, by Amy Shuman
7. The Intangible Lightness of Heritage, by Michael Dylan Foster
8. Documenting Disaster Folklore in the Eye of the Storm: Six Months After María, by Gloria M. Colom Braña
Conclusion: The COVID-19 Pandemic and "Folklife's First Responders," by Georgia Ellie Dassler and Kate Parker Horigan

Sujets

• Natural Disasters
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Folclore
• Natural disaster
• Mythology
• Anthropology
• Folklore

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 06 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253063786
• Langue: English

Extrait

WE ARE ALL SURVIVORS
WE ARE
ALL SURVIVORS
Verbal, Ritual, and Material Ways of Narrating Disaster and Recovery
Edited by Carl Lindahl, Michael Dylan Foster, and Kate Parker Horigan
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.org
2022 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2022
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-06375-5 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-253-06376-2 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-06377-9 (e-book)
We Are All Survivors is reprinted with permission from We Are All Survivors, special issue, Fabula: Zeitschrift f r Erz hlforschung/Journal of Folktale Studies , volume 58, issue 1-2 (July 2017), pp. 1-121.
CONTENTS
Preface / Michael Dylan Foster
1 Introduction: We Are All Survivors / Carl Lindahl
2 Into the Bullring: The Significance of Empathy after the Earthquake / Yutaka Suga
3 Rebuilding and Reconnecting after Disaster: Listening to Older Adults / Yoko Taniguchi
4 The Story of Cultural Assets and Their Rescue: A Firsthand Report from Tohoku / K ji Kat
5 Critical Empathy: A Survivor s Study of Disaster / Kate Parker Horigan
6 Empathy and Speaking Out / Amy Shuman
7 The Intangible Lightness of Heritage / Michael Dylan Foster
8 Documenting Disaster Folklore in the Eye of the Storm: Six Months after Mar a / Gloria M. Colom Bra a
Conclusion: The COVID-19 Pandemic and Folklife s First Responders / Georgia Ellie Dassler, with Kate Parker Horigan
Index
PREFACE
Michael Dylan Foster
T HIS BOOK IS ABOUT DISASTER AND RECOVERY, ABOUT empathy, about the tellable and the untellable, about listening and the limits of listening. Each chapter was written by a folklorist who explores-explicitly or implicitly-the particular skills and attention that folkloristics can offer in the wake of catastrophe. Most of these essays first appeared in a special 2017 double issue of Fabula: Journal of Folktale Studies edited by Carl Lindahl and me. 1 In that context, certainly, each article was meaningful when read on its own-perhaps downloaded from a database or perused online-but we suspected that very few people would read them one after another, as overlapping, interacting elements of a broader discussion. So we are grateful to Indiana University Press for allowing us to republish the original articles here along with two additional chapters. We hope that in this format the essays will be in productive, resonant conversation with one another and that the book will be read cover to cover, adopted for classroom use, and shared with colleagues and friends.
In assembling the current volume, Kate Parker Horigan, one of the original contributors, joined us as a coeditor. Lindahl updated his introduction, and several authors amended short afterwords to their chapters. We also added an illustrated essay on Hurricane Maria and a brief conclusion on how folklorists are documenting the COVID-19 pandemic. These two additional chapters reflect another reason we were determined to share this work now in book form: in the five years since the Fabula publication, we have been reminded constantly that the subject of disaster is persistently, increasingly, frighteningly relevant to us all.
In his introduction, Lindahl explains the origins of the haunting phrase we use as the book s title: We are all survivors. It is impossible for these words not to feel all the more poignant right now, as literally every human on the planet copes with the most devastating pandemic in a century. But the very extent of the pandemic also reminds us that each of us, in our separate isolation, experiences it differently. For all its randomness, disaster (and recovery) rarely affects people equally. Often it lays bare the biases and fissures of our communities, highlighting structural and economic inequities, exacerbating existing prejudices of race, gender, religion, and other factors. Although we may all be survivors, our distinct and often incompatible experiences of the same disaster drive home the difficulties of sharing our stories, reminding us of the challenges of empathy.
Even before the pandemic, it was already evident that disaster would touch all our lives in powerful yet disproportionate ways. Extreme temperatures, catastrophic storms, droughts, floods, rising sea levels-all these symptoms of the climate crisis punctuate the news cycle, bursting into public attention and just as quickly fading from the spotlight, even as the survivors begin a long struggle. When I first became involved in this book project, I had never done research in disaster-affected areas. But now I live and work in Northern California, and like hurricane season in the Atlantic, the annual wildfires in the western United States threaten to normalize disaster. In the fall of 2018, a fire ravaged the town of Paradise, killing at least eighty-five people. In Davis, where I live, one hundred miles to the south, drifting smoke darkened the skies for weeks. The air was heavy with the odor of burning-we were literally inhaling the remains of forests and homes and people-and a layer of gray ash coated the landscape. Classes at my university were canceled for two weeks. The experience made clear once more the unequal ramifications of disaster: death and devastation in one community was, for those of us only a few hours away, nothing more than several weeks of unpleasant living conditions. But it also made me realize the ubiquity and inevitability of disaster: now every year, my neighbors and I prepare for the likelihood of smoke-filled air and, possibly, fire. We are ready to evacuate our comfortable suburban homes, with emergency bags packed at all times.
The discussions in the chapters that follow reflect only a miniscule sampling of how people experience and narrativize disaster and its aftermath. But our objective in this book is certainly not to be comprehensive or even, for that matter, representative. Rather, we hope that from the particulars in these essays, readers will extract insights and tools, both theoretical and practical. But mostly, by offering folkloric perspectives on a subject that, sadly, is here to stay, we want to inspire discussion, exploration, connections, and new questions.
* * *
The editors would like to thank Walter de Gruyter GmbH for granting us permission to reprint articles from Fabula , and Indiana University Press-especially Gary Dunham and Nancy Lightfoot-for working with us to produce this book. Great thanks also to Vinodhini Kumarasamy at Amnet for shepherding us through the production process. For publication assistance, we are grateful to the Research Committee of the English Department of the University of Houston, and the Office of Research and the Dean s Office of the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of California, Davis. We also thank the panelists and audience members of the 2012 American Folklore Society s annual meeting in New Orleans, during which many of these essays started to come together. Finally, we are profoundly indebted to the volume contributors and to all who shared their stories and insights with us and with them.
Note
1 . Carl Lindahl and Michael Dylan Foster, eds., Fabula: Zeitschrift f r Erz hlforschung / Journal of Folktale Studies 58, no. 1-2 (July 2017): 1-121.
WE ARE ALL SURVIVORS
1
INTRODUCTION
We Are All Survivors
Carl Lindahl
T HIS COLLECTION INTERTWINES AND ADDRESSES THREE SETS OF questions. First, how do disaster survivors employ words, ritual, and the material world to narrate disaster? Second, in what ways do survivor narrations go beyond simple descriptions of events to diagnose, respond to, and heal wounds inflicted by disaster? Finally, what is the role of the ethnographer in a disaster-stricken community? Is it to describe, document, advocate, or respond? What can we do as professionals? What should we do, and what should we not do?
The essays brought together here grew from Japanese and American ethnographers experiences with disaster-stricken communities. Specialists in disaster narratives have focused overwhelmingly on verbal expressions. This collection also privileges the spoken word, yet several of the following studies explore ways that survivors enfold gestural, ritual, and material expressions into their narratives of remembrance, grieving, and healing.
The paths of the contributors have been interweaving since 2004, when a magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck the hilly region surrounding Ojiya City, some 260 kilometers north of Tokyo. Folklore professor Yutaka Suga had been conducting fieldwork in the region for six years. 1 In repeated prolonged visits to Ojiya in the wake of the quake, he found that his relationship with the stricken community intensified in ways he had not foreseen. In 2008, folklorist Yoko Taniguchi began her studies in communities affected by the same earthquake and only about thirty kilometers distant from Suga s community. Taniguchi set about to discover how older residents responded to the trauma of the 2004 earthquake.
In 2005, nine time zones across the Pacific Ocean from Japan, Hurricane Katrina struck the American Gulf Coast. Kate Parker Horigan was driven out of her New Orleans home by Katrina, and some 250,000 Katrina evacuees found themselves in folklore professor Carl Lindahl s home city of Houston. The hurricane a